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Bush administration weighs weaker rules on mercury pollution
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON-The Bush administration is about to loosen dramatically an upcoming regulation that would reduce mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, according to federal documents obtained by environmental activist groups.
The Bush administration, under a Dec. 15 deadline, will regulate mercury - a powerful neurotoxin that affects children and pregnant women - for the first time ever, new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt told Knight Ridder Newspapers in an interview late Tuesday.
"We will be regulating mercury as a source from power plants," Leavitt said. "We want to be able to reduce it."
But those reductions would appear to be several times weaker than what the Clean Air Act would require, according to a speech two years ago by then-EPA chief Christie Whitman.
Officials at the Natural Resources Defense Council and National Wildlife Federation, who obtained the documents, said the proposals called for reducing power plant mercury emissions from 48 tons a year to 34 tons a year by 2007. But a Power Point presentation that Whitman used in a December 2001 speech to the Edison Electric Institute indicated that current provisions under the Clean Air Act would require reducing those emissions to about 5 tons by 2007.
Mercury vents out of power plant smokestacks and then falls into lakes and rivers with rain. It then gets in fish, which, when eaten, can cause developmental problems for children and fetuses in pregnant women, according to federal scientists. About one out of every 12 women of childbearing age has unusually elevated levels of mercury, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. More than 80 percent of U.S. states have some kind of warnings on consuming fish because of mercury.
"Mercury is important because mercury poisons the brains of babies," said Frank O'Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust, a Washington environmental group.
O'Donnell likened the proposal to "another arsenic situation," in which the Bush administration initially proposed then dropped plans to ease a Clinton standard for arsenic in water.
"It's a situation where the Bush administration is caving in, in a most foolish way, to a special interest on a well-known toxic air pollutant," he said.
But Scott Segal, a lobbyist for several coal-fired power plants, said the government has to go slow on reducing mercury because otherwise it will cause power plants to switch to more costly, but cleaner, natural gas. That hurts those on fixed incomes, he said, because natural gas prices are skyrocketing.
The Dec. 15 deadline for a maximum achievable standard for mercury emissions for power plants was required by a December 2000 legal settlement between the EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
John Walke, the chief of the council's clean air program, said the proposal would come up with a mercury emissions standard in name only and instead rely on an unrelated 1970 provision. Under the proposal, power companies would have a cap on how much mercury they could emit, but they would be able to trade pollution credits, allowing one dirtier plant to buy emission reductions from another plant.
"This is so out of left field that I couldn't begin to dream this up, this is so lunatic," Walke said. "They have signaled quite rudely their intention to repudiate our agreement. It's clearly the most toxic thing they've done to the air and the American children."
Leavitt said the EPA will be following the 2000 agreement. He would not go into details, saying, "The final decision has not been made on many of the decisions. I want to emphasize that we will for the first time regulate mercury as a pollutant from power plants."
Environmental groups point to at least seven power plants, including one in Leavitt's native Utah, where mercury reductions are much more than what EPA is about to propose.
"EPA's proposal is an insult to public health and the environment," said Bill Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
It's not that bad a problem, said Segal, a lawyer: "The environmental community has consistently overstated the health case for regulating mercury."
The EPA's Web site says, "Methylmercury is highly toxic."
Bush administration weighs weaker rules on mercury pollution
By Seth Borenstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON-The Bush administration is about to loosen dramatically an upcoming regulation that would reduce mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, according to federal documents obtained by environmental activist groups.
The Bush administration, under a Dec. 15 deadline, will regulate mercury - a powerful neurotoxin that affects children and pregnant women - for the first time ever, new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt told Knight Ridder Newspapers in an interview late Tuesday.
"We will be regulating mercury as a source from power plants," Leavitt said. "We want to be able to reduce it."
But those reductions would appear to be several times weaker than what the Clean Air Act would require, according to a speech two years ago by then-EPA chief Christie Whitman.
Officials at the Natural Resources Defense Council and National Wildlife Federation, who obtained the documents, said the proposals called for reducing power plant mercury emissions from 48 tons a year to 34 tons a year by 2007. But a Power Point presentation that Whitman used in a December 2001 speech to the Edison Electric Institute indicated that current provisions under the Clean Air Act would require reducing those emissions to about 5 tons by 2007.
Mercury vents out of power plant smokestacks and then falls into lakes and rivers with rain. It then gets in fish, which, when eaten, can cause developmental problems for children and fetuses in pregnant women, according to federal scientists. About one out of every 12 women of childbearing age has unusually elevated levels of mercury, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. More than 80 percent of U.S. states have some kind of warnings on consuming fish because of mercury.
"Mercury is important because mercury poisons the brains of babies," said Frank O'Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust, a Washington environmental group.
O'Donnell likened the proposal to "another arsenic situation," in which the Bush administration initially proposed then dropped plans to ease a Clinton standard for arsenic in water.
"It's a situation where the Bush administration is caving in, in a most foolish way, to a special interest on a well-known toxic air pollutant," he said.
But Scott Segal, a lobbyist for several coal-fired power plants, said the government has to go slow on reducing mercury because otherwise it will cause power plants to switch to more costly, but cleaner, natural gas. That hurts those on fixed incomes, he said, because natural gas prices are skyrocketing.
The Dec. 15 deadline for a maximum achievable standard for mercury emissions for power plants was required by a December 2000 legal settlement between the EPA and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
John Walke, the chief of the council's clean air program, said the proposal would come up with a mercury emissions standard in name only and instead rely on an unrelated 1970 provision. Under the proposal, power companies would have a cap on how much mercury they could emit, but they would be able to trade pollution credits, allowing one dirtier plant to buy emission reductions from another plant.
"This is so out of left field that I couldn't begin to dream this up, this is so lunatic," Walke said. "They have signaled quite rudely their intention to repudiate our agreement. It's clearly the most toxic thing they've done to the air and the American children."
Leavitt said the EPA will be following the 2000 agreement. He would not go into details, saying, "The final decision has not been made on many of the decisions. I want to emphasize that we will for the first time regulate mercury as a pollutant from power plants."
Environmental groups point to at least seven power plants, including one in Leavitt's native Utah, where mercury reductions are much more than what EPA is about to propose.
"EPA's proposal is an insult to public health and the environment," said Bill Becker, executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
It's not that bad a problem, said Segal, a lawyer: "The environmental community has consistently overstated the health case for regulating mercury."
The EPA's Web site says, "Methylmercury is highly toxic."
