It's not "one" arguing anything. It is a group of researchers conducting a decades-long study since the 60s on a small forest, the "Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest" in New Hampshire, and reporting their observations. They have published their results in a peer-reviewed study (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es3000189).

And, if you actually read the article, you would have read, "The Hubbard Brook data also highlight a difficulty ecologists constantly face, says Kevin Bishop of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences: Determining the 'natural baseline' of an ecosystem remains difficult."

I didn't "cherry pick" the article -- I'm a member of the American Chemical Society, and I happened to see this article in this weeks C&EN edition, and brought it up to the group, because it is obviously related to this forum.

And, I'm not finding fault with the CFSW project. The body of water in the CFSW project is so much large than this area, that there is no comparison -- a different set of problems.

BTW, when I worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, one of our USGS researchers conducted a study on mitigating acid runoff from Colorado mining in a stream, by setting up a pump to infuse a calcium carbonate solution into the stream. The effort was successful while the pump was running, but rapidly returned to the acid baseline when the pump was removed. In the USGS, we did a lot of work on water quality (I worked for the National Water Quality Laboratory in Denver.) One of our big projects was working with a waste treatment facility that was downstream from major pharmaceutical companies. The wastewater had large quantities of pharmaceuticals in it, and we were trying to determine the best way to reduce the water contamination.

I don't think the cited article posits "good pollution". Obviously acid rain is not good pollution.

I don't think you'll find any Bison in New Hampshire... Just plenty of Moose.

That is an amazing visual...