Power plants told to reduce mercury pollution

Power plants told to reduce mercury pollution

Local reaction: TVA praises plan, though environmental groups say it's too lax

BY SCOTT BARKER
barkers@knoxnews.com

Tennessee Valley Authority officials applauded the Bush administration's market-based mercury reduction plan, but area environmental groups roundly criticized the approach as being too lax.

TVA Director Bill Baxter said the utility's current program of installing pollution controls at its biggest steam plant boilers would allow TVA to meet mercury reduction targets when the first phase of the program ends in 2010.

"We believe we're on the right track to comply with the new mercury rule," Baxter said. TVA estimates its power plants produce about 3,200 pounds of mercury every year, which is 33 percent of the 48 tons produced in the United States. The new rule calls for power plants nationwide to cut mercury emissions in half by 2025.

Environmental groups countered that the Bush administration's market-based mercury reduction plan, but area environmental groups roundly criticized the approach as being too lax.

National reaction: Critics say proposal falls short of what is needed, vow to fight it

BY JOHN HEELPRIN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Tuesday ordered power plants to cut mercury pollution from smokestacks by nearly half within 15 years but left an out for the worst polluters.

The Environmental Protection Agency said the cuts would help protect pregnant women, women of childbearing age and young children from a toxic metal that causes nerve damage. Critics said the arrangement fell far short of what was needed, and they promised to fight it.

"The United States is the first nation to take a leadership role in addressing the problem of mercury from power plants," said Jeffrey Holmstead, EPA's top air pollution official.

The nation's 600 coal-burning power plants release 48 tons of mercury pollution a year. That is expected to decrease to 31.3 tons in 2010, 27.9 tons in 2015 and 24.3 tons in 2020.

Forty percent of mercury emissions come from power plants, but those emissions have never been regulated as a pollutant. EPA regulates mercury in water and from municipal waste and medical waste incinerators.

EPA faced immediate political and legal opposition. Senators, environmentalists and public health advocates said EPA failed to do all the Clean Air Act requires.

They said EPA favored industry by setting a nationwide cap on allowable pollution and then allocating a specific amount to each state — and, in a few cases, Indian tribes that own power plants. The states then set limits on specific plants. Those that exceed the limit could buy pollution "credits" from plants emitting less pollution than they're allowed.

The cap-and-trade approach kicks in at 2010. Until then, utilities don't have to do anything specifically to control mercury. Instead, they must follow another regulation to reduce two other pollutants — which the EPA says will also help control mercury.

"At the behest of industry, the Bush administration has just endorsed the continued poisoning of children and pregnant women with mercury," said Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., siding with several Democratic and Republican senators. "We will fight it here in Congress, and we will fight it in statehouses across the nation."

The regulations were issued because of a court agreement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that sued EPA 13 years ago to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants.

NRDC and other administration critics said the EPA should have used the Clean Air Act to require individual power plants to buy the most effective technology on the market for reducing mercury from their stacks. They said that would avoid "hot spots" where there could be local concentrations of mercury pollution.

"We don't think there will be any hot spots, we're quite confident of that," Holmstead said. "A cap-and-trade approach can always get a bigger reduction at a lower cost."

Some states, primarily in the West, would be allocated pollution limits much greater than their actual emissions, environmentalists said, explaining that utilities in those states could sell pollution rights to eastern plants in states most likely to exceed their caps soon.

NRDC's analysis, for example, says California could increase mercury pollution by 841 percent to 82 tons by 2017 and still fall within its cap set by EPA.

However, Michael Rossler, a spokesman for the power industry's Edison Electric Institute, said cap-and-trade would bring about greater reductions eventually, minimize pass-through costs on to consumers in their electric bills and help prevent companies switching from coal to more expensive but cleaner-burning natural gas.

EPA officials said the regulations won't solve the problem, since most Americans get mercury by eating fish from overseas.

They advise people to heed government warnings to limit fish intake. Mercury concentrations accumulate in fish and work up the food chain.

Under the Clean Air Act calls for the use of the most effective available pollution controls, which they say would slash mercury emissions by 90 percent.

"Given the choice between protecting the health of Tennessee's children and protecting big polluters, the Bush administration has chosen the polluters," said Kate Prevost, the regional field organizer for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

By issuing the rule, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is addressing mercury pollution from power plants for the first time.

John Shipp, TVA's vice president for environmental policy, said power plants could achieve 85 percent reductions in mercury emissions when boilers are equipped with both catalytic reduction systems and scrubbers. By 2010, Shipp said, TVA will have installed both systems on 17 of its 59 boilers.

After 2010, utilities will be able to exceed mandated mercury levels only by obtaining credits from cleaner-burning plants. Shipp said it's too early to tell whether TVA would have to buy credits.

Environmental groups worry that the system would create "hot spots" where utilities continue to exceed emissions limits.

"The administration's own analysis shows that these are parameters at best," said Valerie True, clean air program director for the Southern Alliance of Clean Energy. "The fine print will allow TVA to avoid compliance until some unspecified time after 2025, which is as far as the analysis went."

The EPA estimates that American power plants account for only 1 percent of the mercury generated by humans worldwide.

Scott Barker may be reached at 865-342-6309.