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States Call For Stronger Rulings On Mercury Pollution

Calling the Bush Administration’s environmental policies too lax, environmental advocates and other formally asked the state to establish its own rules to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired plants.

The petition, filed by the Harrisburg-based Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, asks the state to require that coal-fired power plants reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent by Dec. 15, 2007, instead of the alternatives proposed in December by the Bush administration.

The most ambitious of the administration’s alternatives would reduce mercury emissions from power plants by 70 percent by 2018, said Charles McPhedran, an attorney for Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future.

“The proposals we’ve seen are too slow and too weak and offer the threat of hot spots,” or areas that have heavier concentrations of mercury, McPhedran said.
The petition was supported by nine other groups, including the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Pennsylvania State Building & Construction Trades Council, and several women’s groups. It resembles a recommendation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clinton administration.

In 2002, Pennsylvania ranked third, behind Texas and Ohio, for the amount of mercury and mercury compounds released from power plants, according to EPA data.
Kurt Knaus, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the state prefers a strong federal rule on mercury reduction because it would deal with cross-border pollution and ensure equitable regulation in each state.

Four states - Wisconsin, massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey - have moved to regulate mercury outputs by power plants in the past year or so, McPhedran said.

Doug Biden, the president of the Electric Power Generation Association, an industry group, said a 90 percent reduction of mercury is technologically impossible. Rather, a 40 percent reduction is probably possible, he said.

If Pennsylvania enacts a more stringent rule than its neighbors, then “the effect would be to shift generation to the states that aren’t controlling mercury, and most of those states would be upwind of Pennsylvania,” Biden said.

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