Pennsylvania to Write Mercury Regs Stricter Than Federal Standards

The US state of Pennsylvania has attacked the new "cap and trade" scheme introduced by the federal EPA, claiming it contributes to mercury emissions rather than reducing them, and also disadvantages sales of its own bitminous coal resources.

Pennsylvania to Write Mercury Regs Stricter Than Federal Standards

August 16, 2005

Environmental News Service (ENS)

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is beginning a process to develop state-specific regulations to control mercury emissions in Pennsylvania.

Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said today that the state Environmental Quality Board approved DEP's recommendation to move forward with plans to "preserve the economic vitality of the state's coal industry while protecting public health."

The Environmental Quality Board (EQB) is a 20-member independent board that reviews all of DEP's regulations. Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future (PennFuture) filed a petition in August 2004 asking the state to consider whether regulations need to be developed to control mercury emissions here. DEP responded on May 18 and reported that a proposed rulemaking should be developed to reduce mercury emissions in Pennsylvania.

The EQB's action today sets that rulemaking process in motion. PennFuture) today praised McGinty, Governor Ed Rendell, and the majority of the Environmental Quality Board. "This is a great day for the health of Pennsylvanians," said John Hanger, president and CEO of PennFuture. "With one woman out of every six of childbearing age carrying amounts of mercury in their bodies that are great enough to cause brain damage to their developing fetus or nursing newborn, we have a public health emergency. And this emergency is causing havoc not just to the families, but to health care facilities, schools, social service agencies and the community as a whole."

"Despite heavy lobbying against the regulation by the polluters, the Rendell Administration, DEP Secretary McGinty and the EQB stood firm, fighting for stringent rules requiring the power plants to stop spewing mercury,"said Hanger. "The families of Pennsylvania will be the true beneficiaries of their political courage."

Mercury is emitted when coal is burned for power, and coal-rich Pennsylvania is at risk for mercury deposition on its lands and waters. When in water, microorganisms convert the mercury into the form methylmercury, which is absorbed by fish and concentrated as it moves up the food chain.

At least 45 states - including Pennsylvania - have issued fish consumption advisories because of elevated mercury levels in fish and shellfish and the adverse effects of mercury on human beings and animals.

In 2003, electric steam generating units in Pennsylvania accounted for 77 percent of the 5.7 tons of mercury emitted from air contamination sources in the commonwealth. Texas is the only state with greater mercury emissions than Pennsylvania, said McGinty.

Pennsylvania has filed several lawsuits challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's final mercury emissions reduction rule for new and existing coal-fired power plants that establishes a cap and trade scheme for the industry as a whole rather than requiring emissions reductions or all power plants.

The cases also challenge EPA's subcategorization of coal types, which encourages fuel switching away from Pennsylvania bituminous coal in favor of coal mined in the western United States.

"The federal mercury rule does not sufficiently protect public health and is a potentially severe blow to our economy," McGinty said. "Inaction is not an option. We need to change course to keep our residents safe and our economy strong."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Mercury Rule became final in May 2005 and took effect nationwide on July 18. Pennsylvania must submit to EPA by November 17, 2006, a state plan that describes how it will implement and enforce the federal emissions guidelines or its own more protective standards.

The state Environmental Quality Board voted 16-3 to allow the state rulemaking process to move forward. The rulemaking will follow the normal public participation process, including working with stakeholders on all sides of the issue.

The EPA rule places more stringent emissions standards on bituminous coal mined in eastern states like Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia. The most stringent regulations are placed on waste coal. Little or no reductions are required of power generating units using sub-bituminous coal from the West.

McGinty explained that because of the disparities in the emission standards, owners of coal-fired units that generally burn bituminous coal could comply with the final mercury emissions standards simply by switching fuels.

"This encourages a shift away from Pennsylvania coal, and will result in a very real and significant economic dislocation for the state's coal industry," she said.

The Pennsylvania Coal Association (PCA) and United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) joined the state environmental agency in June 2004 to ask the federal EPA to drop plans to disadvantage Pennsylvania coal, although the organizations disagree among themselves on key aspects of the federal mercury rule, McGinty said.

It's been condemned as "telling a whole generation of women and children that their health is less important than energy companies’ profits," and as "clearly illegal". Nonetheless last week the US Senate voted to uphold the Bush regime's disgraceful "plan" to cut mercury emissions at the expense of the health of hundreds of thousands of US citizens.

Senate Fails in Bid to Block Bush Mercury Plan

By J.R. Pegg, Environmental News Service (ENS)

September 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, DC - The Senate today narrowly defeated a resolution to block the Bush administration’s controversial plan to cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The 51-47 vote upholds a federal rule that permits a mercury emissions trading program, which critics contend violates the Clean Air Act and fails to address the serious public health and environmental concerns associated with the toxic metal.

"The rule is not based on sound science," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, "and it will harm human health and the health of our environment."

Exposure to mercury, usually through eating fish contaminated by mercury emissions that fall upon waterways, can cause permanent neurological damage in humans and reproductive harm in wildlife.

Some 44 states have issued fish consumption advisories due to mercury contamination in some or all of their waters. Young children and women of childbearing age are most at risk – the federal government estimates at least one in eight American women of childbearing age has unsafe levels of mercury levels in her blood.

Senator James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said sponsors of the resolution were wasting time on a measure that had no chance of affecting the implementation of the Bush rules. Inhofe called the vote "purely political and essentially meaningless," noting that the White House had pledged to veto the resolution and that the House was unlikely to even consider it.

Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and cosponsor of the resolution, said the Senate action "let some healthy sunshine into the Senate to exposed a flawed rule that puts special interests over the health of the American people."

"This was a debate that powerful special interests had been able to prevent, until now," said Leahy. "We have garnered more support than anyone thought possible just a few months ago when we began this effort."

Debate on the measure reflected sharp disagreement about the Bush administration’s mercury plan - divisions that breach party lines.

Six Democrats joined 45 Republicans in voting against the resolution; nine Republicans, 37 Democrats and the Senate’s lone Independent supported the measure.

Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants are currently unregulated - these facilities emit some 48 tons of mercury each year, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation's mercury pollution.

Proponents say the Bush plan, which aims to reduce these emissions some 70 percent by 2018, is the most cost effective way to cut mercury pollution and is modeled after a program that has successfully cut acid rain pollution.

Deeper cuts would hurt the industry, supporters say, and raise electricity costs without much benefit to public health. But the Bush plan has drawn broad criticism and is the subject of several federal court challenges by more than a dozen states and an array of public health and environmental groups.

Critics say it is an inappropriate regulatory approach because of the danger posed by the toxic metal.

The cap and trade plan puts industry-wide limits on mercury emissions and issues tradeable credits to plants that reduce emissions below the limits. But it allows some plants to avoid making any reductions. Opponents contend this will create local hot spots of pollution, disproportionately impacting individual communities.

"I am confounded by the failure of this rule to meet either the spirit or letter of the law," said Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican. "It is clearly delinquent in protecting all Americans equally from the hazards of mercury."

Industry supporters are overstating the economic impact of stricter regulations, Leahy said, and underplaying the health benefits that would accompany cuts in mercury pollution.

A peer reviewed study released last week by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Center for Children’s Health and the Environment estimated some $2 billion a year is lost due to the public health impacts of mercury pollution, Leahy said.

"We are telling a whole generation of women and children that their health is less important than energy companies’ profits," Leahy said.

The Senate resolution took specific aim at a March 2005 rule that allows the federal government to implement the cap and trade plan.

That rule, finalized in March 2005, reversed a previous decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that determined mercury emissions from power plants should be reduced using maximum achievable control technology (MACT).

Supporters of the resolution say that reversal is a clear violation of the Clean Air Act and noted that development of the mercury policy was littered with controversy.

Large passages of the draft rule were lifted verbatim from industry memos and a report by the EPA Inspector General found that senior agency officials manipulated the development of the mercury rule in order to favor the emissions trading plan.

In addition, the Government Accountability Office determined the EPA’s economic analysis of the mercury rule was seriously flawed and violated the agency’s own policy guidelines. The facts point to "an intentional and illegal effort to circumvent the law … designed to benefit big energy companies at the expense of the public," said Senator James Jeffords, a Vermont Independent.

Opponents of the Bush mercury plan contend power plants should be forced to cut emissions much more quickly than the goals outlined in the current regulations.

They note that in a presentation to an industry trade group in 2001, EPA officials said a MACT standard could reduce mercury emissions 90 percent - to 5.5 million tons - four years after a rule is finalized.

MACT standards have been used to rein in the two other major sources of mercury pollution in the United States - medical and municipal waste incinerators.

Utility groups have lobbied hard against a mercury MACT standard, arguing that commercial technologies are too new and expensive to achieve such reductions, and noting that U.S. power plants only contribute one percent of global mercury pollution.

The resolution’s sponsors would derail the only mercury regulation on the books and fail to see that mercury pollution is "a global issue," according to Senator George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican.

"The technology does not exist to accomplish what proponents want," added Senator Kit Bond, a Missouri Republican. "If I had a magic wand, I would be happy to wave it and support a 90 percent reduction. But I don't."

Advocates of a stronger mercury rule say the United States should lead by example. They contend advanced emissions reduction technology does exist and will be commercially available once there is a strong market demand for it.

"It is all well and good we want to reduce emissions in 2018 by 70 percent," said Senator Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat. "We can do better than that. We ought to do better than that."

Tainted Loons, US Senators Tackle EPA on Mercury

Story by Ellen Wulfhorst, Planet Ark

September 9, 2005

RANGELEY, Maine - The scruffy loon chick let out an unpracticed version of the water bird's famed call as researchers tested it for mercury from its native northern New England, home to one of America's highest known concentrations of the dangerous toxin.

Measurements from the baby bird, and hundreds of other loons, lie at the heart of a battle over mercury emissions and controls in Congress.

Led by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, a group of senators want to try a rarely used legislative tactic to overturn emission regulations issued this year by the Environmental Protection Agency. They are pushing for debate in the Senate by next week when the deadline for Congress to act expires.

The regulations essentially switched mercury from being regulated as a hazardous pollutant under the Clean Air Act -- which would have forced hundreds of coal-fired power plants to reduce emissions -- to one with less stringent controls.

The regulations call for a 70 percent cut in emissions by 2015 and a cap-and-trade program to allow factories to buy credits from cleaner plants rather than reduce emissions.

Fourteen states, led by New Jersey, are challenging the EPA in court.

"Mercury is a huge threat. Every study that we see that comes out further underscores the fact that this is a potent neurotoxin that is having some serious serious impacts both on our people and on our ecosystem," said Christopher Ball, deputy attorney general in New Jersey.

Providing a lion's share of data in studies are common loons, considered a good scientific gauge of mercury because the long-lived, fish-eating birds show accumulation over time. "I would start worrying if the loon is having trouble, because the loon is eating the same fish that people are eating," said Dave Evers of the Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham, Maine. "It's a good early warning signal."

On a less scientific note, loons attract people's affection, he said. The way they carry their chicks on their backs, roll over while they swim and unleash their haunting calls make them endearing, he said.

"Mercury is invisible, and when you have something that's invisible, it's just hard to convey," Evers said. "But when that invisible threat's hitting something and harming it, and you're watching a loon, it definitely hits home." MERCURY HOT SPOTS

A government-funded study this year identified nine mercury hot spots from New York to Canada. While mercury occurs naturally, experts say much comes from Midwestern power plants and moves airborne eastward across the nation.

In water, mercury travels up the food chain through fish, birds and mammals, causing neurological damage. Nearly every state has issued mercury warnings about eating local fish.

At one hot spot, in the pine forests of central Maine, institute researchers are wrapping up a summer of nightly trapping, testing and releasing hundreds of loons, some of whom have the highest contamination levels in the country.

"Some should be dead," said researcher Sarah Folsom. "They've got mercury levels way too high."

Trying to find as many loons as possible before autumn, researchers who work in the dark of night netted one chick who sat agreeably while they sampled its blood, clipped a feather, took measurements and attached identification bands.

But its sibling eluded capture for hours, diving deep into the pitch-black water to avoid researchers' spotlight and net. At the EPA, spokesman John Millett said: "We think we can get good environmental results from the Northeast by the way we're going about it.

Power plants are responsible for about a third of US man-made mercury emissions, according to the EPA.

Industry spokesmen say tossing the regulations could mean delays, unreasonable standards and higher electricity costs.

"To have Congress come in and derail that process is the wrong message," said Joe Lucas, head of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices that is funded by coal, rail and utility industries. "When you have a regulation in place that will use technology to reduce those emissions by 70 percent, then that is the right way to go." Leahy calls the regulations disastrous. The EPA's inspector general and the federal General Accountability Office have criticized them as containing too much industry input.

"I am appalled at their audacious disregard for the health of the American people," Leahy wrote in his proposed resolution. "It is time to put people first, and to stop letting the big polluters and the special interests write the rules and run the show over at EPA."