Word: acidizing
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...successive rainfalls make the water increasingly acidic, lakes and rivers turn oddly clear and bluish. Their surviving microorganisms are trapped beneath layers of moss on the bottom; the afflicted water cannot support any but the most primitive forms of life. Some areas, rich in alkaline limestone, are able to resist the assault by "buffering" or neutralizing acid precipitation. But much of New York, New England, eastern Canada and Scandinavia is covered with thin, rocky topsoil left by glaciers long ago, and is particularly vulnerable to acid rain...
...York's Adirondack Mountains, 212 of the 2,200 lakes and ponds are acidic, dead and fishless. Acid rain has killed aquatic life in at least 10% of New England's 226 largest fresh-water lakes. On Cape Cod in Massachusetts, fishery biologists have stopped restocking eight of the area's top ten fishing ponds because the waters are too acidic for young trout to survive in; the onslaught has spurred experimentation with new breeds of acid-resistant fish...
...Quabbin Reservoir in central Massachusetts became so acidic that it dissolved water conduits and fixtures, producing unhealthy levels of lead in drinking water. Cost since that time for neutralizing chemicals: $1 million annually. In Maine, where the measured acidity of rainfall has increased 40 times in the past 80 years, high levels of toxic mercury, lead and aluminum in acidified streams have killed or deformed salmon embryos. The problem is spreading to other parts of the country. Damage from acid rain has been reported in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Florida and California...
...Canada suffers most severely. Environmental officials project the loss of 48,000 lakes by the end of the century if nothing is done to curb acid rain. Already, 2,000 to 4,000 lakes in Ontario have become so acidified that they can no longer support trout and bass, and some 1,300 more in Quebec are on the brink of destruction. In Nova Scotia, nine rivers used as spawning grounds by Atlantic salmon in the spring no longer teem with fish...
Most utilities are vociferously opposed to any emission-control program without further research into the causes of acid rain. The industry argues that 1) scientific data on acid rain are still fuzzy, especially in the crucial matter of precisely who is responsible; 2) costs of eliminating sulfur-dioxide emissions by installing expensive "scrubbers" (which collect harmful substances before they are expelled) are prohibitive; and 3) it is questionable whether the situation is critical enough to justify immediate action. Says Joseph Dowd, general counsel for American Electric Power, which serves 2.5 million customers in the Midwest: "Installing scrubbers could break...