Acid rain can harm our health, cause hazy skies and damage our environment and our property. According to the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, acid air pollution can be linked to breathing and lung problems in children, asthmatics and even healthy people. It can eat away stone statues and buildings. Acid rain causes lakes and streams to become so acidic that plant and animal life is damaged. It also damages trees in the mountains of Vermont and other states. Red spruce trees at high altitudes are especially affected by acid rain.

Acid rain is caused mainly by the pollutants from big coal burning power plants in the Midwest. The coal burned contains large amounts of sulfur and this sulfur becomes sulfur dioxide when the coal is burned. The bigger plants also release nitrogen oxides. These are acid chemicals and are related to two strong acids, sulfuric acid and nitric acid. The pollutants rise into the Midwest air and are carried by winds to the East coast and Canada. When the acid chemicals are blown into areas of wet weather, the acids become part of the rain, snow or fog. In dry areas, the acids may fall to Earth as gases or dusts. According to the

Highlights of the acid rain program are bonus allowances given to power plants for (among other things) installing a clean coal technology that reduces sulfur dioxide releases, using renewable energy sources (solar, wind etc.) or encouraging energy conservation by customers so that less power needs to be produced (www.epa.gov).

http://www.epa.gov/oar/oaqps/peg_caa/pegcaa05.html.

York Times 26 March 2001, Late ed.: A1+.

The 1990 Clean Air Act also gives important new enforcement powers to EPA. It used to be very difficult for EPA to penalize a company for violating the Clean Air Act.

Environmental Protection Agency-Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards.

pollution levels known as the acid rain reduction program which establishes a national cap on utility SO 2 emissions of 8.95 million tons per year (aside from up to a maximum of 530,000 tons of additional emissions authorized for each year between 2000 and 2009). Last year the annual releases of sulfur dioxide were about forty percent lower than the 1980 levels (www.epa.gov). This reduction of sulfur dioxide release should cause a major reduction in the amount of acid rain. The EPA will also require power plants to reduce their nitrogen oxide releases to lower both acid rain and smog formation (www.epa.gov).

The Clean Air Act is the main force behind the control of these emissions in the United States. The Act was originally passed in 1963, but important amendments were

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