Untitled - Haliburton County Community Cooperative Inc

2.0 Healthy WatercoursesWhen analyzing the economic benefit of healthy water courses, it is crucial to understand howhuman inputs and disturbances could potentially affect the amount of fish, habitat or prey within awater body. Therefore if an input or disturbance would potentially lower the amount of fish in awaterbody it would a negative economic value attached. One such disturbance is acid rain, which hashistorically been known to deplete fish stocks.2.1: Acid RainAcid rain came to the scientific forefront during the 1960's when SO 2 emission around theSudbury region were at an all time high. The smelters in Sudbury released vast amounts of SO 2 whicheventually descended into the nearby landscape via acid precipitation that resulted in lakes undergoingdramatic chemical changes. Acid rain had affected some of the regions lakes so severely that the lakeswere devoid of all life, and some to this day remain lifeless while a great many are slowly improving butare lacking species richness and diversities of the past (Schindler, 1988). Studies have shown that lakeswith a low pH (≤6.0) contain significantly fewer fish species than lakes with high pH (>6.0) (Rago &Wiener, 1986). This would mean that the food chain of these lake are significantly impaired and theavailable amount of fish for anglers has decreased, representing a loss of economic benefits. A dead orseverely impaired lake would have a pH below 6.0 and would therefore not be fished as anglers wouldlikely return empty handed. These lakes would therefore contribute zero dollars to the economy. Thiswould imply that an acid impaired waterway is worth zero dollars, so a waterway that hasn't beenacidified is of top value.As ecoregion 5E is quite large and expansive, the historic acid rain deposition of the Sudburyarea would seem to be only a small area impacted, yet acid rain deposition is still ongoing and threatensmany lakes throughout the ecoregion. Further south, the Muskoka lake drainage basin continues toreceive between 30 and 40 kg/ha per year of sulphate from acid precipitation each year. This has caused10