DID YOU KNOW? Energy use: Of Iceland's total consumption of energy, 66% is based on sustainable energy, compared with 5-6% in the European Union. (Source: Hjalmar Arnason, chairman, Committee on Alternative Fuels in the Icelandic Economy, 1999)
ies, but also write regulations—to reach consensus before pollution prevention plans can be ordered for air and water pollutants that cross national boundaries, he said. Many of the amendments were written by "the very industry the bill is supposed to control," charged Charles Caccia, Liberal chair of the House Environment and Sustainable Development Committee, who voted against the bill. For example, the call for virtual elimination of bioaccumulative chemicals was gutted by amendments redefining the term, so that there would be no guarantee of zero or near-zero emissions, said Caccia.
There is no way to predict what will happen to the bill in the Senate, Winfield said. Debate "could go either way" in terms of strengthening or passing the current version, or the government could let it die, he said. The bill's supporters, like Richard Paton, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Chemical Producers Association, praised it for strengthening CERA. Paton pointed to new provisions for researching endocrine disrupters, speeding identification of toxic substances, and improving federal and provincial coordination, but also warned that "the bill is very complex and could be costly and difficult to implement." —JANET PELLEY
Nearly 100,000 Canadian lakes in danger despite acid rain cuts The Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement is up for review this fall, and environmentalists and officials at the Canadian environmental protection agency agree that both nations must cut sulfur dioxide (S02) emissions by an additional 75% to stop damaging Canadian lakes. So far, the governments appear unwilling to act, say environmentalists. The two countries are ahead of schedule for reducing emissions by 40% from 1980 levels, the target of an agreement made in 1991. Canada has already met its goal of making the 40% cuts by 2000, and the United States is well positioned to meet its promise of making the cuts by 2010. Even so, 95,000 lakes in an area twice the size of Texas in eastern Canada continue to be harmed by high levels of acidity, said Mike Moran, research scientist with Environment Canada, the country's equivalent to the U.S. EPA. A U.S. government report has also shown that the acid rain problem is more widespread than originally thought and that more reductions will be necessary to protect the environment (ES&T 1999, 33 (11), 233A). "The targets were intended to be a first step, not something that would fix the problem," Moran explained. Nonetheless, improvements in lake acidity across southeastern Canada, the region hardest hit by acid rain, have
Complex factors—loss of base cations from dust and dirt roads now paved and changes in construction and mining— contribute to higher levels of acid than expected in Canada's lakes.
been less than expected, he said. The SOz from metal smelters, fossil fuel-burning plants, and car exhaust has long been known to mix with moisture in the air to form acids that kill fish and aquatic plants. But new research has shown that while sulfuric acid in precipitation has decreased steadily, the concentration of base cations from dust and dirt that neutralize acids has also decreased, Moran said. The net result, he said, is that the rain's acidity has not dropped as much
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as it would have 20 years ago when there were more neutralizing cations in the air. Scientists speculate that the loss of cations could be due to less tillage of farms in the Midwest, more paving of dirt roads, and changes in construction and mining practices, Moran said. Additionally, thanks to El Ninodriven droughts, more sulfate is being released from wetlands than expected, Moran said. "Sulfur gets sequestered over the years in wet soils, but when they dry out, it's oxidized and washed into lakes when the rain returns," he said. The Canada-Wide Acid Rain Strategy for Post-2000, signed in 1998, set the long-term goal of keeping the S0 2 levels below the critical load level, the amount at which harm is done to the ecosystem. Models show that a 75% reduction from both countries will be necessary to prevent any part of Canada from receiving more acid than the critical load, said Guy Fenech, senior science adviser with Environment Canada. But at a cost of $1.6 billion$2.1 billion per year, "the price tag is huge," he said, adding that Environment Canada also modeled the benefits of a 50% cut from both countries. He feels more confident of the accuracy of this 50% figure and that it could be implemented within 10 years. The post-2000 strategy also di-
rects the areas most affected by the acid rain problem, the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, to develop a schedule of S0 2 reduction targets. But according to Rick Findlay, director of the Ottawa office of Pollution Probe, an environmental group, "the government doesn't have a game plan for acid rain; there are no targets or schedules for attaining them; and we don't know how we'll achieve results." On the U.S. side, legislation such as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (D-N.Y.) bill to cut S0 2 by 50% is languishing in Congress without Clinton administration support, said John Sheehan, communications director of the Adirondack Council, an environmental organization in Albany, N.Y. Rhona Birnbaum, acting branch chief in EPA's Acid Rain Division, confirmed there are no U.S. plans for cuts in acid rain pollutants beyond the 40% reduction by 2010 pledged through the acid rain program, except indirectly through new rules for fine particulate matter and ground level ozone. When U.S. and Canadian negotiators meet in November to review the Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement, their primary focus will be agreements on ground level ozone and particulate matter, not acid rain, Birnbaum said. But she said the participants also will discuss "how well the program is working at achieving specific goals and whether the emission reduction goals are working to protect the environment." —JANET PELLEY
DID YOU KNOW? Killer sponges: In Lake Michigan, large numbers of zebra mussels are being killed and digested by predatory sponges. (Source: ES&T 1999, 33 (12), 1957-1962)
The discovery of fecal bacteria around Lake Michigan prompted the search for a reliable pollution indicator.
Testing the waters for new beach technology As evidence of widespread pollution at beaches mounted, EPA spent this summer testing technologies capable of detecting contamination in a matter of minutes. In the process, scientists were surprised to learn that the sands around Lake Michigan are teeming with fecal bacteria. One of the top priorities of the agency's Beach Action Plan {ES&T 1999, 33 (13), 275A) is to find a rapid pollution indicator by 2002. Water conditions can change dramatically over the 24-48 hours that elapse before results are available from conventional tests that detect the presence of the Escherichia coli bacteria found in polluted water. For example after a rainstorm, "there's really no relationship between the E. coli you detected yesterday and the [pollution levels in] the waters that you're swimming in today," said Richard Whitman, chief of the Lake Michigan Ecological Research Station, operated by the U.S. Geological Survey. "Unless we have a real-time test, we have a dysfunctional warning system," he said. Whitman is testing candidate equipment with funding from EPA, the National Park Service, and private industry. The ideal device, Whitman said, would make taking an E. coli reading as easy as testing a swimming pool's chlorine level.
The number of beach advisories and closings in 1998—the latest year for which comprehensive data are available—jumped 75% from the year before to a record 7236, according to a beach water-quality survey released this July by the Natural Resources Defense Council. NRDC's Sarah Chasis attributed this rise to the increased number of states and municipalities that are now monitoring their beaches. Waterborne pathogens can cause gastroenteritis, dysentery, hepatitis, and ear and upper respiratory infections, according to the NRDC, but there are no national standards mandating beach testing. "Many states and localities with popular beach areas still do not have regular beachwater-monitoring programs in place," according to NRDC's 1999 beach quality report, which says that only nine states comprehensively monitor most or all of their beaches and routinely notify beachgoers of unsafe water conditions. The most promising technology for rapidly detecting E. coli that EPA has found, to date, is a benchtop machine called the RDB-2000, said Al Dufour, director of the agency's Microbiological and Chemical Environmental Assessment Research Division. Originally developed for the beverage industry in 1997, the machine is a cross between a flow
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