Clean Water News

PHILADELPHIA—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today finalized a rule that allows power plants to continue emitting dangerous levels of mercury long past the deadline set by current law. With the disappointing news from Washington, environmental and public health advocates are redoubling their efforts around a state-level effort to reduce mercury emissions from Pennsylvania's power plants.

Compliance with the Clean Air Act would require power plants nationwide to reduce their emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin, by about 90 percent by 2008. In contrast, EPA's final rule establishes a "cap-and-trade" program for mercury under which power plants will be able to avoid meaningful reductions until after 2025.

Pennsylvania's Environmental Quality Board and the Rendell administration are currently considering a proposal to reduce mercury emissions from Pennsylvania's power plants by 90 percent by 2007. The proposal stems from a petition that was filed last fall by environmental groups, women's health groups, and sportsmen's groups.

"Given the choice between protecting the health of Pennsylvania's children and protecting big polluters, the Bush administration has chosen the polluters," said Nathan Willcox, energy and clean air advocate with PennEnvironment. "It is now even more critical that Governor Rendell and the Environmental Quality Board take action to reduce mercury pollution from power plants at the state level."

Power plants-the last unregulated industrial source of mercury pollution-are currently the largest source of U.S. mercury emissions, releasing 48 tons of mercury, or 41 percent of the national total, per year. Pennsylvania's power plants put more mercury into the air in 2002 than those in all but two other states. Under the Clean Air Act, such plants must use the "maximum achievable control technology" to reduce toxic emissions. This means reducing mercury emissions by about 90 percent to 5 tons per year, as EPA indicated in a 2001 presentation to the Edison Electric Institute, the electric utilities' trade association.

EPA's final rule comes in the wake of strong criticism of the proposal from the Government Accountability Office, the EPA Inspector General, and EPA's own Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, which said the proposed rule "does not sufficiently protect our nation's children." The final rule is weaker than the proposal.

Notably, cost-effective technology already exists to control mercury emissions-a conclusion EPA reached in 2000. More recently, a National Wildlife Federation study found that even if Pennsylvania utilities passed along the entire cost of implementing the technologies to ratepayers, the average household would see barely a one dollar increase on their monthly electricity bill.

Today EPA rescinded its 2000 determination that power plants must reduce mercury to the maximum extent achievable by 2008. Instead, EPA's final rule caps mercury emissions from power plants at 38 tons per year in 2010 (up from 34 tons in the proposal) and 15 tons per year in 2018, and permits emissions trading among power plants.

"Trading the right to pollute a toxic substance is risky public policy, and could create mercury hot spots in Pennsylvania and across the country," explained Willcox.

Willcox noted that the EPA's decision to proceed with a "cap-and-trade" mercury rule is "particularly troubling in light of how it was developed." Entire sections of EPA's rule, as proposed in January 2004, were lifted verbatim from memos written by Latham & Watkins, a law firm representing large electric utilities, and West Associates, a group representing 20 power and transmission companies.

A record number of Americans—more than 600,000—wrote the EPA last summer opposing the proposal and calling for stronger action.

"It has become painfully obvious that Pennsylvanians cannot rely on Washington to fix the problem of mercury pollution," observed Willcox. "Luckily, we can go a long way towards protecting Pennsylvanians by acting at the state level to cut mercury emissions from the Commonwealth's power plants."

Mercury pollution is both pervasive and dangerous. Levels of mercury pollution are so high in Pennsylvania that the state has issued advisories warning people, especially women of childbearing age and children, to avoid or limit eating fish from all of Pennsylvania's waterways. In 2004, EPA scientists found that one in six women of childbearing age has elevated levels of mercury in her blood, putting 630,000 of the four million babies born each year at risk of learning disabilities, developmental delays, and problems with fine motor coordination.

PennEnvironment is a non-profit, non-partisan, statewide environmental organization, with more than 13,000 citizen members across the Commonwealth.