We don't need more mercury

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Tuesday, December 9, 2003Mercury rising: the sequel

In its never-ending quest to appease the nation's polluters, the Bush Administration is ready to pull the rug from under a government plan that would require electric utilities to install scrubbers on coal-burning power plants to sharply reduce emissions of the known neurotoxin mercury.Mercury, in the form that spews forth from the smokestacks of some 500 power plants across the country at the rate of 48 tons a year, is especially hazardous to the nervous systems of human fetuses and developing children.Brain damage, mental retardation, blindness, seizures, and digestive and kidney disorders are among its hazards, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.More than 40 states, including Michigan and Ohio, warn their residents against eating large amounts of fish, which absorb mercury as it moves from the air to lakes and rivers and into the food chain.One of every 12 women of childbearing age in this country has an unsafe level of mercury in her blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Coal-fired plants are the largest single source of mercury in the environment. The amazing thing is that the metallic substance is not already regulated by the federal government as an air pollutant.The Clinton Administration, under legal pressure from environmental groups, was on track to change that by the end of 2007. According to a group of pollution-control officials from northeastern states, technology is available to cut mercury emissions nationwide by 90 percent, to only five tons, while raising electric bills by 1 or 2 percent.But the Bush White House, luxuriating in campaign contributions from utilities and other industrial polluters, has another idea. The Environmental Protection Agency would set up a "cap and trade" system which supposedly would reduce emissions to 34 tons, a 29 percent cut from current levels, by 2010.Parsing words in a manner that would make even Bill Clinton blush, EPA officials and polluter spokesmen characterize their weak-kneed plan as some sort of breakthrough. The EPA's new director, Mike Leavitt, says the proposal "fits into the construct of aggressively making the next decade the most productive period in U.S. history in terms of air quality improvement."Such statements don't pass the straight face test, given the administration's continued rolling back of clean air regulations, including a recent decision by the EPA to halt action in pending court cases against power plant operators.And the Alice in Wonderland rhetoric only serves to disguise environmental policies that save money for industry without regard for the health of Americans.Besides saving electric utilities from having to install billions of dollars worth of scrubbers, the administration's plan would allow some coal-burning plants to continue to spew mercury at current levels. The owners would be able to buy their way out of trouble by purchasing pollution credits from cleaner plants elsewhere.That might be a national solution to the mercury problem, but it would come at the expense of people who happen to live near a particularly dirty power plant.