Rain, Rain, Go Away

Each week we are required to write a reflective essay for class. My choice this week was to write about a painting I saw during the art presentation at the ELC of Lake George pre-human expansion into the region. The painting made me reflect on my own childhood in the Adirondacks and how that region has changed just in such a short period of time. One of the main driving forces for this change was the effects of Acid Rain falling into the region from the industrial areas west of New York. While researching for the paper, I found a few quick blurbs in articles I wanted to share:

Lake shows little revival

Acid rain to blame for poisoning of Big Moose in Adirondacks

By Dina Cappiello | Dina Cappiello,ALBANY TIMES UNION

BIG MOOSE LAKE, N.Y. - For fifty years, Big Moose Lake has been the poster child for the slow poisoning of Adirondack waters by acid rain.

Big Moose isn't the most acidic lake in New York's vast Adirondack Park. But it's size - 1,266 acres of tea-colored water - has earned it the reputation as the largest lake to die from acid rain.

Researchers say 500 of the roughly 2,800 lakes scattered throughout the New York's 6-million-acre park show few signs of animal or plant life. And unless conditions change - mainly by diminishing air pollution generated by power plants hundreds of miles south and west of the mountains - half of the Adirondack lakes could be dead 40 years from now.

Acid rain called growing menace

By DINA CAPPIELLO | DINA CAPPIELLO,ALBANY TIMES UNION |

ALBANY, N.Y. - For years, the invisible menace of acid rain has been slowly destroying life in the once-pristine lakes of the Adirondack Park. Researchers say 500 of the roughly 2,800 lakes scattered throughout the New York's 6-million-acre park show few signs of animal or plant life. And unless conditions change - mainly by diminishing air pollution generated by power plants hundreds of miles south and west of the mountains - half of the Adirondack lakes could be dead 40 years from now. "The acid rain problem is worse in the Adirondacks than any other place in the country," said Charles Driscoll, a professor of environmental engineering at Syracuse University, who has studied acid rain throughout the Northeast since the 1970s.


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When I was 10, the DEC (Dept. of Environmental Conservation) placed a buoy about a 1/2 mile away from my house on the lake to test for acid rain in Raquette Lake. That was nearly 20 years ago, and I was happy to see this article while doing my research:

Acid rain damage lessens in N.Y.

Adirondacks lakes found to contain fewer sulfates and nitrates

By Dina Cappiello | Dina Cappiello,ALBANY TIMES UNION

RAQUETTE LAKE, N.Y. - Acid-rain-caused compounds are decreasing in Adirondack lakes, lending further evidence that the region's waters are improving from decades of acid rainfall, according to new research by the state and two universities.

The study, which was recently submitted to the journal Environmental Science & Toxicology, found that in 44 of 48 lakes studied, sulfates - the building blocks of sulfuric acid - had declined since 1992. And for the first time since 1982, scientists detected a reduction in nitrates, which form nitric acid in water, in 15 of 48 lakes.

Consequently, some lakes' ability to buffer acid rain improved, said Karen Roy, program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Adirondack Lake Survey Corp. in Ray Brook. Roy and researchers from Syracuse University and the State University of New York's College of Environmental Science and Forestry conducted the analysis.

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This was incredibly powerful for me, and I hope it made you think a little bit as well. One of the bonuses of the Clean Air Act is that these little guys have now returned to Raquette Lake in massive numbers, and you can begin to hear their songs at night again: