Acid Rain Damage In Vermont Unlikely To Heal For Generations, Scientists Say

[hatrack]

Rain falling on Vermont might be less like vinegar today than it was 30 years ago, but the damage done by acid rain to the state's forests and mountain ponds won't be healed for generations, researchers say. They were reacting to an announcement Oct. 10 that one of the country's biggest power producers had agreed to reduce emissions of acid rain pollutants at Midwestern plants 70 percent and more within 10 years.

Good news, said University of Vermont forest ecologist Don DeHayes, but only a start. Acid rain damages trees and lakes because it leaches away calcium, depriving plants and animals of an element necessary for good health. At least three Vermont lakes are dead, unable to support any life at all, thanks to acid rain. DeHayes is among the researchers whose work showed how calcium loss weakens the ability of trees like red spruce and sugar maple to survive cold, drought and insect attacks.

"Even if we are able to put scrubbers on every smokestack, that isn't going to bring the calcium back," said DeHayes, dean of the School of Environment and Natural Resources. The same problem impedes the recovery of 36 acid-damaged lakes in Vermont, said Heather Pembrook, who monitors water quality in those lakes for state government.

Lost calcium can only be replaced by the gradual weathering of rock, which releases calcium into the soil. "The predictions are that it will take 100 years at the earliest, and on out from that" to replenish lost soil calcium, Pembrook said.
First, the good news


EDIT

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071023/NEWS01/710230309/1009/NEWS05

[soothsayer]

1. what if you dump alka seltzer into the lakes?