Mercury emission rules leave plenty to jeer about

Wednesday, March 16, 2005 11:07 AM CST

Normally we would expect that a government proposal to curb a toxic substance for the first time and limit the amounts that can get into the environment would get a round of applause.

But there were more than a few choruses of boos Tuesday as the Bush administration unveiled its rules to curb mercury emissions at coal-fired power plants.

Wisconsin - which has had fish consumption advisories because of mercury concentrations on all its 15,000 lakes for the past four years - had ample reason to join the chorus.

The new rules proposed by the EPA Tuesday do less - that's right LESS - to limit mercury emissions than rules which are already in effect in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin rules would have required mercury emission reductions of 40 percent in the next five years and 75 percent within 10 years. Under the proposed EPA rules - which have primacy over the state law - emissions would have to be reduced by only 21 percent in the next five years and only 69 percent thirteen years from now.

That's a sorry pace indeed and one that has infuriated environmental groups here in Wisconsin and around the country.

"The Bush administration's rule values profits for a few rather than public health for everyone and ignores what states, like Wisconsin, felt was the best path to take," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. He said that one in six women of childbearing age in the United States has mercury levels in her blood high enough to put her baby at risk.

Only a generation ago, mercury was treated as if it were benign in our society - it was found in thermometers in almost every home, commonly used in a host of industrial applications, stocked in high school labs across the country - and kids everywhere played with the silvery metal drops from broken thermometers to "silverize" pennies.

Today it's recognized for its ability to directly harm the development of nervous systems in young children and infants. Among other thinks, such exposure can even reduce the intelligence of a child who is exposed.

In addition to stripping Wisconsin of its tougher enforcement levels, the EPA rules set up a cap and trade system where one utility can purchase mercury pollution `credits' from another utility that has already made some mercury emission reductions - and thus delay the day they are compelled to reduce their own emissions. Such a system, in essence, tends to concentrate a pollution problem in the area that drags its feet. It's like phasing out smoking in an office building by saying it's only allowed in the cafeteria.

We hope that doesn't happen here in a state that is heavily dependent on sport and recreational fishing and needs to clean up its act as soon as possible.

Clearly, the administration doesn't view the situation with such urgency.

In fact, most of the mercury emissions reductions in the first five-year stage would have come anyway as a result of the scrubber technology and other improvements that are being implemented to reduce nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide at power plants.

Not until then will electric utilities even have to begin to get serious about reducing mercury emissions.

The EPA rules seem less like an aggressive environmental protection policy and more like a taxpayer's approach to filing with the IRS - trying to do the least amount at the latest moment possible.

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