only 15 % of rivers and 38 % of lakes are not impaired. Out of an EPA list of 18,770 impaired water sites, only 529 of them are polluted mostly by toxic point sources. A toxic point source is pollution from just one source, and non-point source pollution is ground run-off from several or many different places. A lake which is dead is a lake with absolutely no life in it whatsoever. By the early 1980s, tens of thousands of lakes were already dead. If acid rain is not stopped, 500,000 lakes will be dead before the year 2000. Acid rain is a major threat to all life everywhere. Measures have been taken to clean the United States' water, such as the Clean Water Act, a law passed in 1972. The CWA promised clean water for the entire U. S. by 1983. It has been 12 years since the deadline, but our water is still polluted. Another way to test water is the pH factor, which you could do at home if you had a kit. It measures water and other liquids on a scale 0-14, 0 being the highest acidity and 14 being the lowest. Acid rain does a lot of damage, to animals, nature and even our own stone structures. Aluminum causes song birds to lay thin eggshells, harming the young birds inside in several ways. The coniferous trees in a forest are hit harder than other trees, although they may not show how badly they were hit. In Germany and Sweden, they have to spread lime over lakes to neutralize the acidity. Acid rain is yet another of the many horrible, perhaps unintentional problems that human beings have created. As with many of them, as soon as we realize it is hazardous to us and nature, it is either too late, or we don't know how to stop it. Hopefully we will continue to try to clean up our air and water before it's too late....
