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Stricter rules on mercury pollution proposed

EPA plan called 'totally inadequate'

Washington — State and local pollution officials Monday released a model rule for reducing mercury pollution from power plants by up to 95 percent, saying an Environmental Protection Agency plan was "totally inadequate."

The EPA rule, finalized this year, would reduce mercury from power plants by about 70 percent by 2025. Environmentalists are challenging it in court.

The much more stringent state/local alternative rule would give state officials a way to require electric companies to remove 90 to 95 percent of the mercury from the smoke of coal-burning power plants by 2012, members of two associations of air pollution officials said.

It would require plants to install state-of-the art pollution controls and would prohibit interstate trading in pollution allowances, a crucial and controversial provision of the EPA rule known as "cap and trade."

"We are acutely aware of the public concern over the mercury fish consumption advisories that virtually blanket our nation," said John A. Paul, regional air pollution control supervisor in Dayton, Ohio.

Health experts say that when a pregnant woman consumes fish containing mercury, her fetus is in danger of being born with brain damage.

Without a federal rule that "would address the mercury emissions problem in a responsible manner, we are compelled to act on our own and adopt rules are protective of public health," Paul said.

Paul is president of the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials, which collaborated with its sister organization, the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators, in developing the plan.

State pollution officials from several states, including Georgia, worked on drafting the plan, said William Becker, executive director of both groups.

Marlin Gottschalk, senior policy adviser to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, said the state intended to issue a rule for dealing with mercury sometime in the next year.

"We have a problem with mercury in Georgia," Gottschalk said. "All watersheds in the state are under fish advisories for mercury."

He confirmed that he participated in "putting together some of the elements of the draft rule," but said it was not certain that the state's eventual plan would include any of it.

The new proposal would take advantage of an EPA requirement that state officials submit plans for complying with the new rule. The state and local pollution officials' associations noted that these plans set a minimum level of state mercury pollution control — but do not establish maximums.

They outlined regulations that state officials could use to exceed the EPA plan.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, an organization that represents the Southern Co. and other coal-burning power companies on air pollution issues, acknowledged that the EPA plan allowed states to adopt more stringent controls.

However, he said, the cap-and-trade system that is central to EPA's plan would be undermined if enough states were to adopt the more stringent approach.

He also said the plan would impose extra costs on "consumers, elderly and those on fixed incomes."

With fuel costs rising, "now is a particularly bad time for states to entertain reduction strategies of this sort," Segal said.

Environmental groups said the alternate plan could have been tougher.

"But we applaud today's action," said Felice Stadler, a mercury specialist with the National Wildlife Federation. "Today, states sent a clear message that we have the technical know-how to clean up toxic mercury pollution from coal-burning power plants to protect future generations."