[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 27, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2927-S2928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE EPA STUDY ON ACID RAIN

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, New York State, or upstate New York, has 
been shocked--I think that is a fair term--and finds itself in near 
disbelief to learn that the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] has 
closed the Ithaca station, which is part of a broad network of 
monitoring stations that collect data critical to understanding the 
impact of acid rain on the Adirondack Preserve. There is little enough 
institutional memory around Washington, but one should think the EPA 
would know that the concern about acid rain began with the 
disappearance of trout from a number of lakes in the higher 
Adirondacks. This was a puzzle and, in the end, it was resolved by a 
fish biologist at Cornell University, Dr. Carl Scofield, who traced the 
cycle: acid rain caused by increasingly acidified air released aluminum 
from the granite surrounding the lakes. That aluminum leached into the 
lakes and was absorbed into fish gills. The fish died.
  In 1980, I obtained approval of legislation--the Acid Precipitation 
Act--which was based on a bill I introduced here in the Congress the 
year before. My bill was incorporated as title VII into the Energy 
Security Act of 1980--Public Law 96-294--and directed the EPA to study, 
over a 10-year period, just what was going on--not to panic, not to go 
screaming to high Heaven that the skies were opening with awful 
substances that would burn holes in our children's heads, and things 
like that--but just to say, ``What is this?''

[[Page S2928]]

 Some longitudinal work obviously was in order. The effort was to last 
for 10 years, at $5 million per year.
  During the Reagan administration, as demand for action grew and 
knowledge was needed, money was collected from research budgets around 
the country, such that our project, in the end, became a half-billion 
dollar research project, the largest of its kind. We ended up knowing 
more about this subject than any of the other industrialized nations. 
It is a real enough subject, but if our understanding of it is to 
progress confidently, we need more data, such as can be collected by 
normal scientific inquiry.
  In the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments--Public Law 101-549--we made the 
best use we could of our research on the subject. We called for large 
reductions in emissions in the Middle West. Winds blow those emissions 
toward the Adirondacks, of course. And just to see that we continued 
along this track, as the then-ranking member of the Committee on the 
Environment and Public Works--in the conference committee on the bill--
I included certain provisions. One was designed so that the lay person 
could understand what was going on. The provision directed the EPA to 
compile and provide a registry of acidified lakes. Now, in Florida, 
that could be all lakes, of course; but it would not be in Pennsylvania 
or in New York. With the registry, over time, we would see how many 
lakes were being added, how many were being subtracted; how might we 
measure, essentially, the effect of our legislation? That has not been 
done.
  I asked for other research measures in law, in statute, that have not 
been followed. And now the EPA has the arrogance and the insolence and 
the stupidity to close the research facility at the site where this 
whole subject was first understood, brought to national attention, and 
was addressed with national legislation.
  Mr. President, I regret to say this, but I hope the administrator is 
hearing. I am not surprised that persons are calling for the abolition 
of the Environmental Protection Agency. If it will not obey the law, 
and if it will not follow elemental common sense, do we in fact need 
it, or is it an obstacle to the environmental concerns we share?
  Mr. President, I thank the Chair.
  I yield the floor.
  Ms. SNOWE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. SNOWE. I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business 
for 5 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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