Acid deposition is not a new phenomenon. It was first described by Robert Angus Smith in 1852. Smith noticed that the rain in the vicinity of industrial Manchester, England, was causing metal to rust more quickly and dyed goods to fade. In 1872 he wrote a book linking coal burning in England to acid rain. Around 1900 many people began to notice fish loss in lakes in southern Norway. In the 1950s Dr. Eville Graham, a Canadian doing research in England, documented that acid rain could acidify soil and lakes, and that many high elevation lakes in the Lake District of England were acidified. He found that acid rain was worst downwind of industrialized areas and linked acid rain and air pollution to respiratory ailments. In the 1960s and early 1970s Svante Oden hypothesized that increased acidity in rain and lakes was causing fish loss, decreased forest growth, increased plant disease, and increased damage to materials from statues to buildings. Oden, a scientist from Sweden, lectured in Canada and the U.S., and his popular and scientific writings sparked much research on both sides of the Atlantic.

Adirondackers were the first to notice changes in local lakes.

The following are excerpts from interviews conducted in the early 1980s. Each of the men has had first-hand experience with the affects of acid rain.

C.V. Major Bowes

lC.V. "Major" Bowes came to Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks in 1951, when fishing was good and waterfowl were plentiful. Big Moose Lake teemed with all kinds of aquatic life. Today, the acidification of Big Moose has very nearly exterminated the brook trout, white fish, landlocked salmon, and lake trout once commonly found there. Crayfish, freshwater shrimp, frogs, hooded mergansers, and otters are rarely seen. All that thrives there now are perch, bullheads, and mud fish. Like hundreds of other Adirondack lakes, Big Moose is the victim of acid rain.

Many years ago, from the top floor of the old main hotel at Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake, the then young daughters of "Major" and Diane Bowes, the proprietors, called down to their folks: "Please bring up some good tasting water"

What kind of nonsense is this thought their parents. Theyre drinking the same good water as we are.

A short time later one of the daughters suffered stomach upset. The Bowes had their water tested. The findings showed five time the lead fit for human consumption. and revealed copper contamination as well. The acidified water was leaching copper out of the pipe and lead from the solder joints. The copper also caused problems with Covewood's sewer system by destroying the necessary anaerobic bacteria.

About the same time, state fishery and biology experts had concluded that the demise of fishing in Big Moose was not, as previously believed, the result of tannic acids from beaver activity and forest decay. It was due to acid precipitation.

Ray Fadden credit: The Adirondack Council "Beside the Stilled Waters"

Ray Fadden

Ray Fadden, who founded the Six Nations Indian Museum in Onchiota (an Indian name meaning rainbow), is a keen observer. He feels a kinship with the natural world. And so it grieves him to see its collapse - to watch the steady, tragic decline of fish, mink, otters, loons, blue herons, toads, frog, and darning needles.

"Half the birds and wild animals are gone, and the rest could follow," he says. "The forest is ailing. The cores of young evergreens are rotting. I have to really scrounge now to find cones and seeds."

In the 60s and early 70s he was shocked by the environmental damage wrought by pesticides, particularly DDT. (For years DDT had been placed in surrounding streams to kill blackfly larvae.) About the time the residual effects of DDT were finally lessening, the more pervasive and insidious acid rain began taking it toll. Onchiota rainbows now signal devastation. Pots of gold are a thing of the past.

Ray Fadden is a perplexed man. "Why haven't we learned from Europe and Canada, and realized where we are headed? Why don't we think about the future and what will happen to our children and grandchildren?"

credit: The Adirondack Council " Acid Rain A Continuing National Tragedy"

By 1980 it was clear that acid rain was a major problem. In that year the U.S. Congress created the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP). The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments set goals to reduce those pollutants that cause acid deposition. Since 1990, emissions of sulfur dioxide have decreased, and those of nitric oxides have remained stable. Scientists have continued to study acid deposition and its many effects. Although still as much as ten times as acidic as natural rainwater, the acidity of precipitation in the U.S. has decreased. Some regions are beginning to see signs of recovery, but many, like the Adirondacks, require significant further reductions in emissions before recovery can begin.