Acid rain controls not working any miracles

By David Lore Copyright 1998 The Columbus Dispatch August 16, 1998

Remember acid rain?

It was the environmental crisis of the late '80s with scarcely a day going by without seeming new evidence that sulfur-laced rains from the Midwest were destroying lakes, streams and forests across the Northeast and Canada.

So in 1990, Congress ordered a multibillion dollar cleanup of electric utility stacks which - we now learn - may someday improve the environment.

Or maybe not.

The National Acid Precipitation Program, the group monitoring the Acid Deposition Control Program, reported this month on costs and gains for 1995, the first-year cuts were required for sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions.

The chapter on costs was quite specific: an estimated $ 726 million was spent by utilities the first year, less than the $ 1 billion-plus once predicted, but still a pretty significant chunk of change.

The chapter on benefits, however, wiggles like Jell-O.

"The effects of deposition on sensitive receptors (i.e., lakes and forests) can range from days to centuries," it states. "Therefore, in many affected areas, responses to the Title IV emission reductions will not be expected for many years."

Nobody expects Mother Nature to leap from her sick bed just because Congress passes a law.

But certainly a $ 700-million-a-year cleanup program should produce some significant benefits in our lifetime.

The Adirondacks were the poster child for the acid rain debate. Numerous lakes there, it was charged, were acidic and sterile because power plants to the west were burning high-sulfur coal and casting sulfur-dioxide wastes to the winds.

Even though these discharges have been cut, the Adirondack lakes haven't improved much since the 1980s and a few have gotten worse, according to the monitors' update. "The recovery anticipated in 1990 has not been realized," they said.

Overall, the report finds that acid rain has turned out to be a lot more complicated than anybody acknowledged in 1990.

"We've found that there are a lot of factors involved in the acidity of a lake rather than just rainfall," explains Michael Uhart, study director.

Just reducing sulfates in rain, lakes and streams doesn't necessarily reduce the acidity of the water, he said. This is because watershed soils may continue to release sulfates over many years. There are also naturally occurring organic acids whose impact on water quality were probably underestimated.

"We still believe that (acid rain) is a significant contributor, but it's hard to make a generalization to say acid rain is the most significant, or if it's zeroed out that we'll see improvements," Uhart said.

This is a remarkable statement. But there's more.

The winter kill of red spruce forests at higher elevations in the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains of Vermont and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, for example, was also blamed on acid rain.

But now the monitors say "there is uncertainty about the relative importance of sulfur, nitrogen and acidity in causing this decline in cold tolerance."

Likewise, in 1990, it was projected that a 10-million-ton reduction in sulfur dioxide emissions would reduce haze levels by 21 percent.

But actual improvement, after first-year pollution cuts of 5 million tons, averaged only 8 percent, too small a change to notice without instrumentation.

One of the greatest benefits from acid rain legislation, said Uhart, could be the potential health gains.

Environmental studies suggest that sulfur dioxide particles may contribute to respiratory problems, particularly in children and the elderly.

It's within reason to suspect that air pollution isn't good for you, but scientists are still debating how much exposure is dangerous and how these airborne particles affect the body.

"Studies in laboratory animals are beginning to provide preliminary evidence of plausible biological mechanisms," the report says. "Definitive results, however, are not expected for several years."

This scientific uncertainty comes a decade after thousands of miners lost their jobs and an entire region was indicted as an environmental outlaw.

Whatever the merits of acid rain control, the scientists are telling us that environmental changes are difficult to understand and even more difficult to reverse. This is a lesson worth noting as we move deeper into the global-warming debate.

David Lore is science reporter for The Dispatch. He is online at:

dlore@dispatch.com

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