Acid Rain

Your editorial in the Jan. 10 Times on acid rain was welcomed by all those in Canada and the United States who are anxious to see a resolution to this costly and far-reaching problem. I think it is particularly commendable that The Times has taken this stance on an issue that does not have as high a profile in Southern California as it does in other parts of your country and Canada. I also agree with your editorial that while the acknowledgment of the essentially man-made cause of acid rain is an important step forward, the key will be to see how the report is acted upon by Washington and whether it will lead to the implementation of an acid rain control program in the United States.

And you thought acid rain was bad? As it turns out, it literally rains fire on the sun. In a video released this week, NASA highlighted yet another beautiful, hellish phenomenon of our nearest star, coronal rain. Thanks to the sun's magma twisting and braiding and swirling the star's countless magnetic fields every which way, occasionally things get a little messy. Such as on July 19, when a moderately powerful solar flare burst hot plasma out from the surface. As the material cooled and condensed, it traced along the magnetic fields arcing back to the sun's surface, creating a glowing, reddish-yellow arch of searing plasma raining back onto the sun. The size of these arcs of death rain is highlighted at 1:06 into the movie when Earth is shown next to them in scale.

Greenpeace demonstrators protesting acid rain damage today climbed two 400-foot smokestacks and tried to scale a transmission tower at Maryland's largest power plant, a utility spokeswoman said. Eight people were arrested. Four demonstrators climbed smokestack catwalks and unfurled two vertical banners--"Congress Act Now" and "Stop Acid Rain"--at the Potomac Electric Power Co.'s Chalk Point facility, which releases pollutants that Greenpeace claims contribute to the acid rain problem.

Frank Cady Character actor was on 'Green Acres' Frank Cady, 96, a character actor who played Hooterville general store proprietor Sam Drucker on the TV sitcoms "Green Acres" and "Petticoat Junction," died Friday at his home in Wilsonville, Ore., said his daughter, Catherine Turk. No specific cause was given. Like Mr. Haney, Eb Dawson, Hank Kimball and Arnold the Pig, Cady's Sam Drucker was a supporting cast member on "Green Acres" to lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas and his socialite wife Lisa, played by Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, who had ditched the high life in New York City for the charms of a farm in Hooterville.

Campaigning for President in 1980, Ronald Reagan hazarded a guess that the Mount St. Helens volcano spewed more polluting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere than America's automobiles and industrial sources did. He was wrong. But he has persisted in thinking that nature, not man, is the main cause of damaging acid rain, which is made up of both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from industrial sources.

At Canada's prodding, President Reagan's approach to the combatting of acid rain is to promise $2.5 billion for the development of technology to reduce the offending emissions of oxides of sulfur and nitrogen from large power plants and other sources. While Reagan has been forced to recognize the existance of acid rain as a problem, he still is proposing, in effect, more research and study.

Not long ago Vice President George Bush proposed a tax credit for child care. A few days later President Reagan stunned those who have found him unresponsive on the issue by saying that he backed Bush's idea. Maybe if the vice president spoke out in favor of doing something about acid rain the President would again reverse field and agree with him. It is worth a try, because nothing else seems to work.

Acid rain is not a regional problem affecting only far-off New England. It now threatens the lakes and woods of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades and the Rockies. The difference, if any, is that the West may have more time to head off the consequences. Scientists from the Energy Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley, working with the World Resource Institute, have recently surveyed acidic deposition in the Western states.

Recent regional maps produced by the Environmental Protection Agency show the acid rain problem in the Northeast and upper Midwest to be worse than originally thought, environmental groups charged. "The maps show that surface waters susceptible to damage from acid rain are more seriously endangered and distributed over a broader geographic area than previously reported," said Susan Buffone of the National Clean Air Fund.

After nearly a year of both fudging and foot-dragging, the Reagan Administration finally has agreed to put some real money into the fight against acid rain. It was last March when the President joined Canada in a $5-billion, five-year cooperative program to control emissions of sulfur dioxide, which scientists have identified as the primary ingredient of acid rain. The President announced last week that he would seek $2.5 billion for acid-rain control.

Blinking mad over street ads Re "Elaborate digital signs OKd," March 30, and "L.A. reignites street ad fight," March 26 This, I must say, is a spectacularly bad idea. The billion-dollar Wilshire Grand project will have 45 and 64 stories of "thousands of tiny lights embedded in the buildings' surface" doing light shows. The first 10 floors of each building will run ads. Personally, I love colors, and light shows energize me. But the planet cannot afford such a huge misuse of energy.

Environmental officials reassured residents Saturday that radiation in Southern California's air remained below levels of concern as workers in Japan struggled to contain releases from a stricken nuclear power plant. Los Angeles County Fire Department officials also sought to debunk an e-mail hoax that predicted acid rain would result from Japan's nuclear accident. The fraudulent e-mail was issued in the fire agency's name and claimed that radioactive particles released in Japan could mix with rain and "cause burns, alopecia or even cancer.

Conservatives have been attacking the Clean Air Act since its passage in 1970, continually claiming that federal efforts to fight air pollution would wreak economic ruin. As congressional Republicans prepare to fire their latest broadside at the law, it's worth remembering how inaccurate these predictions have proved. Since the GOP takeover of the House in November, party leaders have been vowing to produce bills that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

Air pollution in China's industrial east appears to have significantly reduced light rainfall over the last 50 years, raising the possibility that cutting pollution could ease a severe drought in the region, according to a study released Saturday. Light rain -- anything from a drizzle to 0.4 of an inch in a day -- is also crucial for agriculture, as opposed to heavy rain, which triggers floods that can wash away crops. Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the number of days of light rainfall in eastern China decreased by 23% from 1956 to 2005 because of air pollution.

Nov. 12, 1937: "More than 600 automobile owners have reported their cars damaged by the acid rain which followed aerial smoke screen maneuvers over the city by 12 Army planes ... and more complaints are coming in," The Times said. Major insurance firms met to assess the problem. S.H. Bucholtz of the Fire Companies Adjustment Bureau said: "The loss may total many thousands of dollars." The insurers said they would ask the government to pay for the claims.

A crystalline Adirondack lake once held up as an example of a "dead" lake devastated by acid rain has now become a symbol of nature's ability to heal itself once pollutants are curbed. As the name implies, Brooktrout Lake teemed with trout before air pollution from faraway cities began to change the chemistry of lakes and soils in the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park. In 1984, biologists found that Brooktrout Lake and hundreds of others in the rugged region were completely devoid of fish.

The National Audubon Society said Tuesday that it is mobilizing members to monitor the acidity of rainfall in an attempt to make a case for new controls on sources of acid rain. The society, saying it has 550,000 members in 500 chapters, has 60 monitoring stations at work already and expects 200 eventually. Volunteers will check the acidity of every rainfall, phone results to a central headquarters and try to publicize particularly abnormal acidity in their hometowns, Peter A. A.

President Reagan's endorsement Wednesday of a multibillion-dollar program to reduce acid rain was praised by Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney as "a real commitment" to eliminate a serious cross-border environmental danger. Reagan ended two days of talks with Mulroney by endorsing a report that called for a five-year, $5-billion American pollution control plan. Mulroney had vigorously sought support for the proposal, which was made by former U.S.

Citing what she called a public health emergency, a state official in Albany ordered power plants to reduce emissions blamed for acid rain. Environmental Conservation Commissioner Erin Crotty announced the emergency order aimed at reducing emissions at least temporarily. At the same time, she announced an appeal of a decision by a state judge this year that had blocked the same regulations from taking effect permanently.

Re "L.A. May Invest in Coal Power," Jan. 29: Shame on Los Angeles city officials and the DWP for planning to purchase the filthy energy from a new coal-fired power plant in Utah. Especially shameful is Councilman Tony Cardenas' statement that cost considerations should override the objective to meet the goal of producing 20% of the city's power supply from clean energy sources by 2017. The real cost of burning coal? The public absorbs the costs of global warming, acid rain, leaching and black lung disease that are caused by the power plants.