Controversy Continues Over EPA Mercury Standards

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Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:05:57 GMT

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Controversy Continues Over EPA Mercury Standards

 

March 10, 2005 | Back Issues

 

 

 

 

Controversy Continues Over EPA Mercury Standards

 

As the March 15 deadline nears for the Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) to announce its new rules for governing mercury pollution from

power plant emissions (BGW, March 3, 2005), controversy continues to

erupt over the validity of the scientific standards being utilized by EPA.

 

This week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO)

reported that the EPA analysis, on which the standards will be based,

had distorted its analysis by failing to fully document the toxic

impact of mercury on human brain development, learning ability and

neurological functioning. The GAO called on EPA to correct its

analysis before issuing a final rule.

 

Last month EPA's inspector general released a report asserting that

EPA ignored both scientific evidence and agency protocols in order to

set a timetable and standards consistent with the Bush

Administration's desire to relieve coal-burning power plants of Clean

Air Act requirements that such plants install the newest and best

pollution control technology when they expand.

 

In the report by EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, EPA was charged

with setting unrealistically low limits on mercury pollution and then

working backwards to justify its upcoming rule.

 

As for the GAO report, EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman told the

Washington Post that the final rule would include comparisons between

the impacts as measured by EPA and the impacts measured by its

critics. [1]

 

Environmentalists strenuously object to the Bush Administration's plan

to use a cap-and-trade system for mercury pollution, in which an

overall limit would be set, with individual plants trading pollution

credits. Environmental health organizations argue that such a system

has never been used when toxic chemicals are involved.

 

They say this would allow dangerous levels of pollution to continue to

threaten populations both near the power plants and those downwind

from the plants.

 

Mercury contamination of fish has become a serious enough problem that

both the Food and Drug Administration and dozens of states have issued

health advisories recommending that women of childbearing age reduce

consumption of several types of fish, and that they refrain altogether

from eating shark and swordfish.

 

Environmental health groups support a Clinton Administration plan,

which called for a 90 percent emissions reduction by 2008. The Bush

Administration has proposed a 70 percent reduction by 2018. Despairing

of persuading the administration to change the expected rule,

environmental groups are gearing up to fight the standard in court.

 

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SOURCES:

[1] EPA Distorted Mercury Analysis, GAO Says, Washington Post, Mar.

10, 2005.

 

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