In the 1980s, acid rain was a wake-up call. The idea that the sky could open up and rain poison on us, and it was our own fault for being energy pigs—it’s mainly caused by sulfur and nitrogen compounds from electricity production, cars and factories—was a shocker.
Acid rain’s impacts were obvious. It killed animals and plants and corroded human infrastructure. Its potential for ecological destruction was such that industries and governments wasted no time creating cleaner technologies, economic incentives for using them, penalties for ignoring the problem and well-funded scientific monitoring programs to measure the results.
But the problem isn’t solved yet. Especially if you live here. Tom Clair, an ecologist and environmental chemist at Environment Canada’s Dartmouth office, has figured out why Atlantic Canada is hit with some of the lowest amounts of acid rain, yet has some of the most acidic fresh water in North America.
“We’ve had acid rain in Nova Scotia for more than 100 years and it’s accumulated in our soil, which doesn’t have a lot of buffering materials like limestone,” Clair says. “It’s clay, and there’s acidity all through the system. Although we’ve reduced acid rain 50 percent since the ’70s, it’s not changing the acidity of Nova Scotia lakes and rivers.”
That’s not new information, but Clair determined that aluminum plays a much larger role in Nova Scotia’s freshwater woes than previously thought. In an October paper, he writes that “improved techniques for its measurement have been developed.” He was the first to use those techniques to measure how acid rain affects aluminum levels in our rivers and streams.
Clair’s team sampled 97 salmon rivers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. They found that the southwestern portion of our province, which has experienced the worst losses of salmon populations, has seven rivers with aluminum in quantities toxic to aquatic life.
Prior to this research it was believed that organic materials neutralized the aluminum. But without a buffer, acid rain “liberates aluminum” in the soil and water. “It’s everywhere like the holy spirit,” Clair says. “We have lots of carbon in the water but the pH is so low [acidic] that lots of free aluminum is also present. Our rivers are acidic and high in toxins; the fish don’t have a chance.”
Some of southwestern Nova Scotia’s waters have low pH levels and aluminum concentrations as high as 30 milligrams per litre, twice the level that seriously harms fish. “Fresh waters in parts of the province won’t return to pre-acid levels for a hundred years or more,” Clair says, “even if we reduce acid-rain emissions to zero.”
Conservationists are trying to accelerate the recovery in some areas by applying crushed limestone by the tonne, to move the pH levels back toward a neutral 7. Clair isn’t confident. “It’s a big area; you can’t lime everything,” he says. “It’s a stop-gap measure.” The long-term solutions, he says, are continued reduction in emissions of sulfur and nitrogen compounds, and time.
Acid rain was one of the planet’s early demonstrations that our actions have consequences. The half-empty view is that nature is going to kick our asses hard for what we’ve done to it. The half-full view is, we were given a warning and reacted well, fostering cross-border and cross-sector human cooperation at its best to ward off a serious threat. As a result, our fresh waters and their aquatic life will eventually recover from 200 years of suffering.
The irresistible comparison is global warming, something immeasurably more complex and subtle than acid rain. Like acid rain, this phenomenon has been ongoing since the industrial revolution, with rapid increase in the last century, and was first scientifically observed in the ’70s. Yet it’s harder to point to a dead fish and say, “global warming did that.” Instead, we have trends—rising shorelines, increasing frequency of severe storms and droughts.
With acid rain, we saw, we acted. The problem is not solved, we still suffer the fallout, but it seems to be well in hand. Will we be able to say that about global warming before our world is irrevocably altered?
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2012.
Speaking of poor quality water, have you heard of the residents in Stellarton? Apparently they’ve been drinking water for the last couple years with all sorts of nasty cancer causing stuff in it. Known for years and quick to quiet in their tight lipped boys club City Council.
Maybe you should understand the water treatment process before commenting on Stellarton’s water quality. The “nasty cancer causing stuff” as you call it are DPBs, Disinfection Byproducts, a result of adding chlorine and other disinfectants to drinking water to make it safe for human consumption. Almost all water treatment processes produce some DPBs, though the levels in the Stellarton do exceed guideline levels any health risk is minimal. The most concerning DPB is THM, a byproduct of chlorine breaking down organic material in the water, but THMs and DPBs in general are only of concern if ingested in large quantities over a long period of time, and can be easily removed with a household carbon or charcoal filter.
So please do your research before talking about something you don’t understand.
Fantastic, a real story on real pollution. Unfortunately Claire goes rogue near the end with the ever present “global warming” scare. Well, maybe Claire and others might be interested in what was leaked to the internet today. A draft copy of the 2013 IPCC WR5 Climate Change update. This is document is the “bible” of climate change. This is where the Governments, green groups, and left wing media get their cue from to guide them in promoting this CO2 debacle. Its considered the gold standard of climate science. It states there is no discernible trends in droughts, floods, hurricanes etc due to human activities. It shows decades of computer models have been wrong based on real observations. It talks about the sun…imagine that, the sun having a impact on earths climate….it talks about aerosals, which are carbon particles and what they don’t know about them in the atmosphere, it talks about clouds and how they don’t know much about them…but they do know they cool. The person who leaked the draft document is a reviewer in the IPCC for the up coming 2013 assessment. His reason is the concern that the final draft in 2013 will have had a lot of this data removed. His reason is valid. There have been numerous scientist contributors to this IPCC “bible” since 1990 that have quit because their work was omitted or their comments were not included in the final draft. Who does this? Non-scientist political IPCC members and IPCC politicized scientists from many countries around the world give the final approval of this IPCC document. Theres even reason to believe that activists representing some Green groups influence the final draft document from the IPCC. Sad….and scary considering the UN wants $100 Billion yr to fight climate change. Imagine what that money could do for rivers, forests, lakes, etc.
How do you spell snob?
Is it “Enviro157”?
Thanks to hrmwt for bringing that topic up.
Thanks to the snob for elaborating.