The Adirondack Council was among a handful of groups invited to testify Tuesday before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on a bill that would seriously change the Clean Air Act.

The group, which broke with other local and national environmental organizations that oppose the changes, went before the Clean Air, Climate Change and Nuclear Safety subcommittee in Washington, D.C., as it considered the Bush administration's Clear Skies Act.

The council said Bush's program will curb acid rain better than the unenforced Clean Air Act.

" As representatives of the area suffering the most damage from acid rain, we will encourage Congress to take swift action to curb power plant emissions," Adirondack Council Deputy Director and Counsel Bernard C. Melewski said. "The sooner legislation like this passes, the better. Every day we wait, more trees and fish die, more birds and mammals are contaminated by heavy metals, more buildings and monuments are defaced, more people develop -- and die from -- chronic lung ailments."

Acid rain is a serious problem for New York, in large part because the state is downwind from major Midwestern power plants. The pollution that forms acid rain drifts to New York, where it poisons the air, water and soil.
The hardest hit areas of the state, including the Adirondack and Catskill mountains, have contaminated lakes, and mountains with soil that can't grow vegetation. The air pollution also exacerbates respiratory problems, and causes other ailments that cost the state lives and dollars.

Some of the main differences between the existing Clean Air Act and the proposed Clear Skies Act are the caps on pollution each program allows. While the Clean Air Act is far more restrictive on the number of tons of pollutants that energy producers can pump into the atmosphere, the council said there are so many loopholes in the law that the act has never been fully enforced.

The council maintains that Bush's plan is comprehensive enough that if it was fully implemented sooner there would be no more acid rain in the Adirondack region by 2010.

Although several similar pollution-reduction plans are before Congress, including one from Republican Reps. John Sweeney of Clifton Park and John McHugh of Watertown, the Adirondack Council said Bush's plan is most likely to be passed.

Other environmental groups, however, are skeptical of the plan, especially because it is gaining support from industry groups responsible for pollution.

The Clean Air Trust, for example, said Tuesday's hearing was "an obviously stacked panel, with most witnesses preselected to say nice things about the Bush plan, which would weaken the existing Clean Air Act and permit coal-burning electric power companies to pollute more and longer than they would under the current law."