Political Quotes

“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.”