A Win on Mercury!

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Through the excellent work by a coalition of environmental, sportsmen, public health and religious groups, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) recently introduced a draft rule that will require the state's power plants to stop spewing toxic mercury by 90 percent by 2015; it’s called the PA Mercury Rule.

Our draft regulation goes further than that of the federal government – called CAMR, the Clean Air Mercury Rule. The Federal CAMR allows trading, which we will never accept, and will increase the chances that no specific mercury reductions will occur at Pennsylvania power plants. With CAMR, PA utilities will trade pollution credits and allow other out of state plants to reduce mercury, while our citizens will continue to be poisoned.

We must have a Pennsylvania specific mercury control regulation, i.e. the PA Mercury Rule that prohibits pollution trading.
But the highly profitable utility industry does not want to install pollution control equipment. They've convinced legislators to introduce bills aimed at killing the Pennsylvania Mercury Rule. Today, legislators are being asked to co-sponsor and support these bad bills.

Pennsylvania is home to the coal-fired plant that's the worst mercury polluter in the nation, and our plants are collectively third worst in the country for mercury pollution. The Fish and Boat Commission has issued an official warning that advises people to limit eating fish caught in any lake, river or stream in Pennsylvania because of the widespread mercury contamination.

TAKE ACTION!
Call or E-mail your state legislators and urge them NOT TO CO-SPONSOR and TO OPPOSE the so-called Clean Air Mercury Compliance Act (HB 2610) and the Senate version SB 1201, which would kill the Pennsylvania Mercury Rule. Such legislation will put Pennsylvania babies, and our critical sport fishing industry, at serious risk.

BACKGROUND
Mercury contamination is a serious public health threat. Mercury contamination in fish poses a serious risk to all citizens, but especially expecting mothers and children. Exposure to even small amounts of mercury can affect the way kids learn, think, memorize and behave. Mercury levels in Pennsylvania are so high that the state has issued advisories warning people, especially women and children, to avoid or limit eating fish from all of Pennsylvania's waterways. Even with such warnings in place, the EPA estimates that one out of six U.S. women of child-bearing age has levels of mercury in her blood that are unsafe for a developing fetus.

Developing babies are extremely sensitive to mercury, because unborn babies are at the top of the food chain. Mercury levels in babies' blood are 30 percent higher than the mercury levels in the mother's blood. You can hear more about the threat of mercury in even small amounts in an interview with national expert Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network on the Penn Future web site.

Coal-fired power plants emit most of the mercury and are uncontrolled. Coal-fired power plants are responsible for about 80 percent of Pennsylvania's mercury emissions to air, and our state's power plants are some of the highest emitters nationwide. Pennsylvania's power plants put more mercury into the air in 2002 than those in all but two other states. Yet, coal-fired power plants are the only major mercury polluters that remain uncontrolled.

Pennsylvania power plants are raking in big profits. This is because their capital costs have been paid off, like a fully paid mortgage. Pennsylvania coal-fired power plants are baseload plants that run all of the time, producing electricity at costs far below the wholesale price of electricity.

Cutting mercury pollution is affordable and possible. A National Wildlife Federation report estimated that the average residential customer would see an increase of only $1.08 on monthly electric bills if all the cost were passed through to consumers. But in Pennsylvania's competitive retail electricity market, electricity suppliers cannot just routinely pass on their costs. They can choose to pass on none, some or all of their costs, or they can decide to reduce profits.

Mercury pollution comes from all over, but it also stays close to home. New data from an Environmental Protection Agency-funded study demonstrates that 70 percent of local mercury contamination comes from local power plants. And, reducing mercury emissions from local sources results in big reductions in mercury contamination in nearby fish and wildlife. Waste incinerators in Florida were required to reduce their emissions of mercury by more than 90 percent. Subsequently mercury contamination in fish and other wildlife in the Everglades went down by 60 percent. This same phenomenon has been demonstrated in other studies.
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