Acid Rain Concern

The word is getting out about the insidious nature of acid rain: This week, there was news that "downwind" states in the Northeast are petitioning the Environmental Protection Agency to set stricter limits on Midwestern coal-fired electrical utilities; that the E.P.A. is about to provide on-line environmental performance profiles of factories in the oil, steel, automobile, and paper businesses, and that Gov. George E. Pataki has proposed to curb the sale of the E.P.A.'s curious "emission vouchers" to out-of-state power plants and businesses.

While the East End would seem somewhat sheltered from the deleterious effects of acid rain because of the nature of our soils and the effect of a saltwater environment, what has happened in the Adirondacks - the deaths by acidity of lakes, ponds, streams, and trees - is sufficiently proximate to create concern.

Dogwoods, hemlocks, and sugar maples are high on acid rain's hit list, as are minerals in the soil and fungus and microbes on the forest floor necessary to the cycle of plant life. Furthermore, a recent study shows that acid rain also often contains nutrients, particularly nitrogenous ones, which might be linked, for example, to the choking of wetlands by phragmites and of local waters by brown tide.

Acid rain is a lot more serious than most of us realize. The acidic fallout of factories, combined with automobile exhaust, are adding to the greenhouse gases insulating the earth and threatening its environment.

What can be done? For starters the E.P.A. could roll back its emission voucher charade. This is a Federal program in which heavy polluters are spared the E.P.A. ax by buying emission permission slips from less-polluting concerns that have met E.P.A. limits.

Then the obvious: Hike fines for violators, more closely follow, as some New York City television stations already have done, the movement of acid rain, more closely monitor its effects, and more broadly disseminate the information.