Several states in the Great Lakes region (IL, IN, MI, NY, OH, PA) willsoon be forced to reduce harmful emissions from power plants during fivemonths of the year. That’s the result of a recent federal appeals courtruling that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce newemissions standards. Lawyers representing the EPA argued that emissionsof nitrogen oxide from the plants are partly to blame for the increasein asthma cases and other respiratory problems. The new standards willnot only improve human health, but also environmental conditions in thecountry’s largest state park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s BrendaTremblay reports:
Transcript
Several states in the Great Lakes region (IL, IN, MI, NY, OH, PA) will soon be forced to reduce harmful emissions from power plants during five months of the year. That’s the result of a recent
federal appeals court ruling that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce new emissions standards. Lawyers representing the EPA argued that emissions of nitrogen oxide from the plants are partly to blame for the increase in asthma cases and other respiratory problems. The
new standards will not only improve human health, but also environmental conditions in the country’s largest state park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brenda Tremblay
reports.
(Sound of voices, bird chirps from porch of Covewood Lodge)
The summer vacation season is in full swing on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack
Mountains of Upstate New York. (sound of screen door slam, footsteps) At the Covewood Lodge, staff members are running around, getting ready to host a wedding. The lodge’s owner, Major Bowes, says he’s loved life in the Adirondacks for fifty years.
“It’s just terrific, and you don’t have to walk far where you can be back ten thousand years. It looks just the same.”
But the Adirondacks aren’t the same. People used to come to Big Moose Lake to
fish. Now they go elsewhere because this lake is too acidic for most fish to survive.
Even before the fish left, Major Bowes says, changes in the Adirondacks started to affect his own family, in part because they drink treated spring water from the surrounding mountains.
“Our girls were not well when they were growing up. And we couldn’t find out what was the matter with them, and even the Saranac Lake Hospital, we couldn’t, we never did find out. But in the course of searching we found that our water had five times the recommended lead and three times the recommended copper in it. And it was coming because the acid was eating the pipes. We were literally drinking our pipes.”
So Major Bowes started adding limestone to his water supply. He installed a sand
filter, and over time, he says his daughters got better. By that time, people had stopped fishing Big Moose Lake, even though it’s one of the largest lakes in the region. Other Adirondack lakes were losing fish, too — (sound of canoe banging sounds, plastic ruffling) And scientists are pretty sure they know why.
Ok, I’ll set things up here a minute.
Fifty miles north, at the foot of Whiteface Mountain, Walter Kretser and his
assistants climb into a canoe on the bank of Owen Pond. (rowing noises)
They drop a plastic tube into the water, seal it, and draw up a sample to pour into a
flask.
(Popping sound, water splashing)
For seven years, Walter Kretser and his team have studied water samples from
fifty-two different Adirondack lakes. Some of the lakes are so remote they have to fly in a helicopter to reach them. The lakes and mountains of the Adirondacks make up the largest State Park in the continental United States. But it’s the park’s location that interests scientists like Kretser. The Adirondack Mountains can rise as high as five thousand feet, and they’re exposed to winds from the southwest. So just about everything that’s put into the atmosphere in the Midwest makes its way to this wilderness.
“So, you know, the atmosphere is coming down like a river towards us and we have this big dam and the dam is the Adirondacks, and everything splashes on top of the Adirondacks.”
(Sound of more rowing, splashing noises)
“Everything” includes acid rain. Coal-burning plants spew nitrogen oxide and
sulfur dioxides into the atmosphere, where they’re converted to acids and carried here in the clouds. The good news, say scientists, is that acid rain caused by sulfur dioxide emissions has decreased in the last seven years. The bad news is that acid rain caused by nitrogen oxide has not decreased: instead, it has increased by 2 percent. Already, Walter Kretser says, 750 of the three thousand lakes in the Adirondacks are so acidified that life in and around the lake is affected. The fish are disappearing, the trees are rotting: even birds and animals such as eagles, otters, and loons, are being affected as the situation gets worse.
“So theoretically, if we continue exactly as we are doing now, we could in fact have as many as forty percent of our lakes affected in the next fifty years.”
That’s why, Kretser says, the latest ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in
Washington is such good news for the Adirondacks. The court gave the
Environmental Protection Agency permission to force nineteen states to reduce their emissions of nitrogen oxide. The reductions will begin in the year 2003: Kretser says he expects to detect improvements almost right away.
“Some of the lakes that are in the middle that are marginally acidified now could in fact be in good shape in just a very short time and could support fish populations.”
“This is an important first step but it’s certainly not the end of the road. It’s kind of the beginning of the journey.”
Jayne Mardock, director of the Clean Air Network, says she’s pleased by the new
ruling. But it has one serious weakness: it only reduces emissions from April ’til October. Because acid rain falls all year round, Mardock says, the EPA should be able to enforce reductions of emissions twelve months of the year. Nonetheless, she says any emissions reduction at all will benefit the Adirondacks.
“In the abstract, yes, it will help, you know, but time will tell how much it will help, actually.”
(Sound from porch of Covewood)
Back at Covewood Lodge, Bowes has welcomed the first wedding guests to his lodge
on Big Moose Lake. (sound of yelling kid) While they’re checking in, he steps out onto the porch and points to yellow, hazy clouds hanging over the mountains across the lake.
“It’s like living downwind of a volcano, twenty-four hours a day. And when the wind’s blowing out of the southwest or even out of the west you don’t have to be a genius to see where the acid rain coming from because you can see the ash in the atmosphere.”
But Bowes is hopeful that in a few years, he’ll be able to stand on his porch and once again see fluffy, white clouds – and maybe even a few fish – jumping out of Big Moose Lake. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brenda Tremblay in Big
Moose, New York.