While recent studies prove that the Adirondack lakes are slowly recovering from toxic levels of acid rain, experts say changes in environmental policy may backtrack that improvement.

The study of 50 lakes, which began in the 1970s, suggests that current environmental policies are contributing to the improvement in water quality, said Charles Driscoll, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Syracuse University and a leader in the study.

A proposed policy, however, would eliminate a process called the New Source Review, established by President George W. Bush’s Clear Skies Initiative, and this elimination may contribute to bringing acid rain levels back up and could significantly hamper the recovery of Adirondack lakes, Driscoll said.

“It’s hard to know what might be the result,” Driscoll said. “It might result in a 15-20 percent increase in levels of acid rain that the Adirondacks would experience and levels may not go down to the extent they could have.”

The New Source Review requires that power plants built before the 1970s comply with new emission regulations and update their technology to modern equipment when they undergo substantial renovations, said David Popp, assistant professor of public administration at SU. These technological upgrades are very costly and some plants decide not to renovate in order to save money. For those plants that do update, the New Source Review may force them to shut down because the costs for upgrades “is not worth it.”

“The elimination of the New Source Review is not necessarily a bad thing,” Popp said. “Even with the New Source Review, plants could keep on polluting now if they don’t update their equipment.”

Bernard Melewski, deputy director and counsel to the Adirondack Council, is opposed to the proposed elimination. He says it would lead to more pollution and more factories could contribute to increasing toxic emissions. The Adirondack Council has asked the Environmental Protection Agency, which is proposing the elimination, to suspend the process until Congress can review the program and vote on it.

“These changes ought to be done in Congress,” Melewski said.

Overall, toxic emissions from Midwestern power plants must be reduced 50 percent from where they are now, with or without the New Source Review, to continue lowering the levels of acidity in the Adirondack lakes, Melewski said.

Of the 3000 Adirondack lakes located in northern New York, 25 percent are chronologically acidic, Driscoll said. They are very sensitive to acid rain because they have a high annual rainfall and they have very shallow soils. They are also located downwind from factories in the Midwest.

“The EPA knows that controlling power plant emissions directly affects the Adirondacks,” Melewski said. “They just need to target the right places at the right times.”

Published on April 16, 2003 at 12:00 pm