Rick Webb sent in this article from the New York Times of April 5, 1999. The report to which the article refers was co-authored by Rick Webb and applies to the acidification of West Virginia’s trout streams among others. It is reprinted here with permission from the New York Times.

For years, scientists have viewed the Adirondack Mountains in New York, where hundreds of lakes and streams can no longer sustain life because of chronically high acidity, as the region that suffers the most from acid precipitation.

To combat the problem, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat, has proposed legislation that would reduce the airborne pollutants -- sulfur and nitrogen -- that cause acid precipitation. But he has found minimal support in Congress, where some members think the problem remains isolated to New York and its neighbors, and others believe that the government has done enough to address the issue.

Now a new Federal report may provide important ammunition for New York’s fight. The report, a comprehensive survey of recent research, concludes that despite important strides in reducing air pollution, acid precipitation remains a serious problem in the Adirondacks and is a growing threat to forests and watersheds in the southern Appalachians, Colorado’s Front Range and elsewhere.

New York officials and environmentalists say the report will help broaden political support for Moynihan’s legislation, breaking down the regionalism that has stymied such measures in the past.

So far, no member of Congress from south of New York has offered to co-sponsor the bill. But the environmentalists contend that will change.

"It’s not New York against everyone else anymore," said Representative John Sweeney, a Republican who represents part of the Adirondacks and is a sponsor, with Representative Sherwood Boehlert, a Republican from Utica, of the House version of Moynihan’s bill.

Opponents of such legislation, including utility companies, contend that existing laws are having an effect and just need more time to work. Coal-burning power plants concentrated in the Ohio River Valley are a major source of nitrogen and sulfur pollution.

In 1990, Congress adopted amendments to the Clean Air Act that were intended to see that by the next decade, coal-fired power plants and other industries had cut their sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions by half. Last year, the Federal Government also ordered 22 states in the East and Midwest to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide, mainly during the summer [yes, and Underwood and AEP are kicking and screaming about even this! Editorial kibbitz].

"These policies are going to get you where Moynihan’s bill will get you," said John Kinsman, manager for atmosphere science with the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association of shareholder-owned electricity utilities. The group has not taken a public position on Moynihan’s bill.

Acid precipitation occurs when sulfur or nitrogen, which drift eastward on the prevailing winds, mix with moisture in the atmosphere to form sulfuric or nitric acid and fall as acid rain, snow or fog. Dry nitrogen and sulfur pollution also turn to acid when deposited in waterways or mixed with moisture in the soil.

The new Federal report was produced by the National Acidic Precipitation Assessment Program, a consortium of agencies that includes the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although the report has been available on the Internet, it has not been printed or widely distributed yet. Officials expect to release bound copies next month.

The new Federal report provides much good news about the 1990 amendments, saying that they have effectively and relatively inexpensively reduced sulfur emissions and acid precipitation in much of the country. For that reason, the report may also be used by opponents of Moynihan’s bill.

But the report also issues numerous warnings about the observed and theoretical effects of continued acid rain. And though it does not break new scientific ground, it provides evidence from recent research that acid precipitation is both more complex and intractable than had been thought 10 years ago.

Among its findings:

b.. High elevation forests in the Colorado Front Range, the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee and the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles are saturated or close to saturated with nitrogen. (Excess nitrogen can seep from saturated soils into nearby streams and lakes, causing them to become more acidic.)

c.. The Chesapeake Bay is suffering from excess nitrogen, some of it from air pollution, which is causing algae blooms that suffocate other life forms.

d.. High-elevation lakes and streams in the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains may be on the verge of suffering chronically high acidity.

e.. Many waterways in the Adirondacks are becoming more acidic even as sulfur deposits decline. The environmental agency has projected that by 2040, about half the region's 2,800 lakes and ponds will be too acidic to sustain much life.

Although it offers no concrete solutions, the report concludes that further reductions in sulfur and nitrogen pollution may be necessary to protect those sensitive regions. "If the rates of deposition of both sulfur and nitrogen are not reduced further, they will continue to degrade forests, lakes and streams," a news release accompanying the report says.

Many scientists who study acid rain say the report offers strong arguments for Moynihan’s bill.

"It’s been the near consensus of scientists that the Clean Air Act amendments haven’t gone far enough," said Jack Cosby, a professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Environmental Science.

For evidence, biologists can point to several streams in the southern Appalachians, like the St. Marys, near Waynesboro, Va., which flows down the Blue Ridge Mountains into the Shenandoah Valley.

The river, as picturesque as an image in a travel brochure, is dying. Decades of acid rain have killed off local populations of fish, insect and vegetation species along its five miles, scientists say. Gone are the silvery rainbow trout that once spawned in the river, as well as much of the green-hued plankton that fed insects and minnows. Gone are several types of mayflies that fishermen tried to imitate with lures. Most of the fishermen are gone, too.

"It’s clear as gin," said Paul Bugas, a state biologist who has studied acid rain in the region. "But when you’ve got a beautiful stream here, you've often got a sterile stream."

A study produced last year by Dr. Cosby and two other University of Virginia scientists for an environmental group, Trout Unlimited, found that by 2041, 22 percent of Virginia's 304 trout streams would be chronically acidic, or virtually dead, unless air pollution laws were toughened. The report said about 6 percent of the state’s streams were chronically acidic.

As he stood on a boulder-strewn ridge called Black Rock Outcrop in Shenandoah National Park, Rick Webb, one of the co-authors of that study, said certain streams were more vulnerable to acid precipitation because the bedrock or soils around them cannot provide the minerals to neutralize acid. Such is the case with the quartzite and sandstone bedrock common to the western slopes of the Blue Ridge mountains.

After heavy rainfall, streams that lack natural acid buffers will suffer sudden waves of high acidity that kill off fish larvae and eggs. Although adult fish may survive those acid shocks, the fish populations will inexorably dwindle and over time entire species may vanish from a stream, Webb said.

Such theories help explain what fishermen in Virginia have been noticing for more than a decade.

Hank Woolman, 67, has been building cane fishing rods and guiding fly fishermen in the Blue Ridge Mountains since he retired from farming 23 years ago. The St. Marys River was one of his favorite spots until the rainbow trout started disappearing in the 1980's. Then the brown trout also vanished. Now only brook trout, which can tolerate more acidic water, are still in the river, and their numbers, too, are diminishing. He no longer fishes the St. Marys.

"You walk along the river and it's flowing bright and clear," he said. "It’s beautiful, until you realize there’s nothing growing on the rocks. And there’s no insects. The stream was full of insects."

To resuscitate the St. Marys, Virginia recently tried to neutralize its acidity by dumping 140 tons of limestone sand from a helicopter into the river. The lime is expected to stabilize current fish populations for five years or more.

"We recognize that this is a temporary stop gap," said Mr. Bugas, the state biologist. "The key is to reduce emissions."

Armed with such statements, as well as draft copies of the Federal report and their own studies, New York environmental groups have joined forces with organizations like Trout Unlimited in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina to lobby Congress to pass Mr. Moynihan’s bill [italics added by editor].

"In a weird way, this has been good for New York," said John Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council, an environmental group. "It bears out the warning that we issued more than 10 years ago: that the Adirondacks are the canary in the coal mines. We’re dying first, but that doesn't mean everybody else is immune."