Acid Rain

EAGLE BAY, N.Y. -- The remarkable thing about Big Moose Lake on a bright summer day is what is not happening.Canoeists paddle across the sparkling lake, which lies close to this sleepy Adirondacks village. Teen-agers water-ski. Children mount a high-pitched campaign to win permission from their mothers to go swimming.Nobody is fishing.Anglers used to come to Big Moose Lake for the trout, but the trout have not been plentiful for many years, thanks to a long-distance pollution problem that was supposed to be well on its way to being solved almost a decade ago.But acid rain never went away.

Over the last two decades, countries in northern Europe and North America have been enacting regulations to reduce smokestack emissions of sulfur in an effort to curb acid rain and its harmful effect on the environment.In what researchers say is the first comprehensive look at the effect of those reductions on rivers and lakes, an international team of scientists reports finding a nearly universal decrease on both continents in the levels of sulfates -- the major acidifying pollutant deposited by acid rain in surface water.

Katie WaltersSchool: Atholton High SchoolHometown: FultonAge: 17Her accomplishments: Katie took second place at the 31st Annual Maryland Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, held recently at the University of Maryland College Park. Her project, "Acid Rain's Effect on the Remobilization of Lead Due to Variations of Exposure Time, pH Level and the Presence of Ligand," found that lead is present in and around homes even after they have been painted with non-lead paint.Her two-year study also showed that lead is not only in roads and streets, but also in ponds and streams -- a result of acid rain.

Two utilities hundreds of miles apart will announce today that they have signed a contract that calls for one to buy from the other the right to emit a chemical that causes acid rain, freeing the dirtier one from having to clean up its own plants as stringently.It is the first such deal to be publicly disclosed, those involved and other experts say, and could break the ice for dozens of similar deals.The Tennessee Valley Authority will buy the right to emit 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, the main cause of acid rain, from Wisconsin Power and Light Co. The Wisconsin company will reduce its emissions to a level 10,000 tons below what the law requires, and the TVA will get additional time to install smokestack scrubbers or replace high-sulfur coal with cleaner fuels.

(TC WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dan Quayle's deputy chief of staff, already under fire for reviewing federal regulations that could benefit a company he co-owns, has a second possible conflict of interest involving his stock ownership in one of the nation's most polluting electric companies, a congressman said yesterday.Allan B. Hubbard appears to have "a direct conflict of interest" because he chaired a meeting at which an acid rain regulation was weakened to the possible benefit of PSI Resources Inc. of Indiana, said Representative Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif.

Rockwell quits electric carGeneral Motors Corp.'s electric car could be delayed because Rockwell International Corp. has pulled out, apparently angry over the cost-cutting tactics of GM's new global supply procurement executive. Rockwell was to be the lone source for plastic body panels for GM's electric car, called the Impact, the ,, trade journal Automotive News reported yesterday.The electric car is critical to GM and other automakers because California, the biggest single market for cars in the nation, requires that 2 percent of any maker's autos sold there by 1998 be pollution-free.

Auto labor agreementThe United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp. reached a tentative agreement yesterday to end a 4-day-old strike at a plant that makes the bodies for its second-best-selling car. UAW international representative Jim Sickles refused to disclose details of the agreement until the 4,200 members of Local 602 vote on the proposed agreement today. The strike centered on local plant grievances.Workers walked off the job Friday at the Lansing, Mich., plant that makes the outer body of the fast-selling Pontiac Grand Am. Workers picketed outside the facility Sunday.

Pork bellies, heating oil, orange juice, acid rain?Created by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, air-pollution rights began publicly trading last week like other commodities on the Chicago Board of Trade. A permit to emit one ton of sulfur dioxide -- the principal component of acid rain -- sold for about $140; nearly 300,000 rights (tons per year) were offered for sale.The pollution rights market rewards utilities that go beyond their government-mandated smokestack cleanup requirements, and provides a hedge for utilities that cannot (or choose not to)

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- A United Nations environmental team has found no evidence of a major ecological catastrophe in Yugoslavia as a result of NATO's bombing war, its leader said yesterday. But he urged the West to provide immediate aid to help clean up significant "hot spots" of war-related pollution. In a news conference to discuss preliminary findings from the 10-day inspection, Pekka Haavisto, a former Finnish environment minister and chairman of the United Nations' Balkan Task Force, said: "We talk about chosen hot spots where immediate action has to take place, but not about a major ecocide or countrywide catastrophe.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va -- Preliminary findings from a survey conducted in April of 452 Virginia brook trout streams indicate some recovery from the acidification levels found in a 1987 baseline survey. The results will require further analysis because they may be strongly influenced by differences in stream flows at different times -- the sampling in April 1987 took place under much wetter conditions than sampling in April 2000. Also, long-term monitoring during the 12-year period indicates acidification is continuing for most Virginia brook trout streams.