In early December, 1999, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit in Columbus, OH, federal court against the American Electric Power Company, based in Ohio. Spitzer’s claim: that the 10 plants of American Electric in four states (IN, VA, OH, & WV) are violating the federal Clean Air Act by dumping “acid rain” on NY’s Adirondack State Park and the Catskill mountain forests, lakes and ponds. Spitzer further alleged that “acid rain” was contaminating New York’s water supply. Connecticut authorities have joined New York in the lawsuit, as has the City of Toronto, in Canada.
Crown Point, NY, Town Supervisor, Dale French, President of the Adirondack Solidarity Alliance and a former nuclear power design engineer, wrote a critique of “acid rain” hysteria in 1997. Extracts from that article are herewith reprinted.
Extensive scientific research and incalculable resources have been expended in the name of understanding and reducing acid rain in our environment. Has all the attention been warranted? We must look at the results of a mid-1980s study by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation (ALSC). From the Summary and Conclusion section we find information that would seem to refute most of the environmental claims of man-made catastrophe.
There is considerable analysis of naturally acidic lakes, lakes with low oxygen levels and other lakes that regardless of acid level would not support fish. From the ALSC report: “Thus, based on these analyses, the estimated number of surveyed waters that lack fish for which mineral acids and acidic deposition are the most likely primary cause is in the neighborhood of 100-113 or about 30% of the fishless lakes sampled by the ALSC.” (Of those 30%, there is still no link to acid rain being a greater factor in the lake acidification than the makeup of the drainage system surrounding those lakes.)
The report goes on, “These findings are consistent with the conclusion that at least some of the fish populations have been lost from the Adirondack Lakes as a result of acidification and acidic deposition.” Also, “Many of the lakes that are currently fishless (perhaps about half or slightly more than half) have always been fishless and would remain fishless even with reductions in acidic deposition…Others are fishless, at least in part, because of natural acidity.” A final conclusion: “Thus, the majority of lakes currently supporting sport fish species would appear to be relatively insensitive to further acidification.”
This information is from our own NY Department of Environmental Conservation. Whether this extensive research was conducted to prove that acid rain was the main culprit in this arena, I cannot conclude. Many times studies are conducted to give credence to the obvious. The obvious here, is that a few hundred lakes do not have fish.
But the conclusion that acid rain has caused this has been largely refuted. Dr. Edward Krug, a director of environmental projects for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, has conducted extensive research into the issue of acid rain and its affect on our lakes. From one of his many thought-provoking articles, Dr. Krug wrote: “A number of lakes in the Adirondacks and Nova Scotia that are naturally acidic became more alkaline for several decades in the late 19th century and early 20th century—when massive cutting of trees and burning of stumps by lumberers reduced the acidity of the forest floor, and soil run off made it possible for species such as trout and salmon to survive. After lumbering and burning came to an end, forests grew back, and the soil run off, hence the waters, returned to their natural acidity. These changes in land use often dwarf in importance the impact of acid rain.”
Fossil studies reveal that “high-altitude Adirondack lakes, including Lake Colby and Woods Lake, have been fishless for most of their history. They also reveal that these lakes temporarily lost some of their natural acidity during the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries—and during this period were filled with fish. A quote from the conclusion of that article is, perhaps, more revealing in explaining where the acid rain debate has gone: “To date, the pattern has been that research is initiated in response political activists declaring something to be a ‘crisis,’ a response which, unfortunately, legit-imizes the assertions of catastrophe and does not deal with the problem of political interests co-opting science.”
Reprint permission given by AgAir Update, P.O. Box 850, Perry, GA 31069 - an international agricultural aviation publication.
Return to Spreading the Facts