What Is This Doing to the Environment?

In high-acid environments, lake waters grow unnaturally clear, as plankton and other types of microscopic life succumb. The reproduction of aquatic animals is hindered or stopped. Then, too, aluminum and other metals, normally found in harmless compounds, are released from the soil in toxic forms. The aluminum attacks the gills of fish, making breathing difficult. They literally suffocate.

Particularly tragic is springtime, when life stirs from its winter sleep, when fish are being hatched and frogs and salamanders lay their eggs in meltwater pools. The concentration of pollution in the melting snow often increases the acidity a hundredfold, preventing more than 80 percent of the eggs from hatching.

“The whole water system changes,” says Dr. Harold Harvey, pioneer acid-rain researcher. “The clams go first, then the snails, then the crayfish; and many of the aquatic insects like the mayfly, damselfly, stonefly and the dragonfly. Then you start dropping off things like amphibians. . . . Then out go the fish and so on.”

What has been the result? Trout and bass can no longer be sustained in 2,000 to 4,000 lakes in Ontario. Salmon are dying out in nine rivers in Nova Scotia where they once thrived. Government reports say 48,000 more lakes are threatened.

In the northeastern United States, over 200 lakes in the Adirondack Mountains are without fish. Ten percent of the largest fresh-water lakes in New England have joined the casualties. An Ohio government study predicts that “if something is not done quickly, 2,500 lakes a year to the end of the century will die in Ontario, Quebec and New England.”

But the casualty list is worse in Sweden. According to Environment Minister Anders Dahlgren, the number of dead lakes there has reached 20,000!

“WHEN I came up here you never saw the likes of the fishing.” As he spoke, Peter Peloquin, longtime resident and owner of a lodge alongside Canada’s Lake Chiniguchi, leaned across the table for emphasis. “In that Chiniguchi chain,” he continued, “there used to be a spectacular fishery in almost a dozen big lakes.”

But in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s curious things began happening in this lake. Young trout were wiggling on the surface​—something they never normally do—​and gulls made quick, easy meals of them. During the same period the last of the big fish was caught. Today there are no fish at all in Chiniguchi nor in hundreds of neighboring lakes.

What is causing this havoc? Acid rain​—one of the most serious ecological problems of our time.

As for human health, the evidence of adverse effects of acid rain is sketchy but still alarming. Acid lake water has leached out toxic lead and copper from plumbing systems into the water supply. In some areas this has caused such illness as diarrhea in babies.