TRENTON
– Attorney General Peter C. Harvey
filed suit today for a coalition of nine
Attorneys General who are challenging
a new federal Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) rule that fails to protect
the public adequately from harmful mercury
emissions from coal-fired power plants,
which pose a grave threat to the health
of children.
The
suit challenges an EPA rule published
today that removes power plants from the
list of pollution sources subject to stringent
pollution controls under the federal Clean
Air Act. EPA announced the rule on March
15, along with a second rule establishing
a cap-and-trade system for regulating
mercury emissions. The trading scheme
will allow some plants to actually increase
mercury emissions, creating hot spots
of local and regional mercury deposition.
Through
mercury deposition, mercury enters the
food chain and ultimately is consumed
by humans, resulting in severe harm, particularly
when ingested by pregnant or nursing mothers
or young children. EPA’s rule has
devastating implications for young children,
who can suffer permanent brain and nervous
system damage as a result of exposure
to even low levels of mercury, which frequently
occurs in utero. Mercury exposure can
result in attention and language deficits,
impaired memory, and impaired visual and
motor functions.
“We’ll
take whatever legal action is necessary
to protect New Jersey’s families,”
said Acting Governor Richard J. Codey.
“We’ve adopted tough rules
to reduce in-state mercury emissions,
but with more than one-third of the mercury
deposited in New Jersey coming from out-of-state
sources, we can't let the federal EPA
shirk its duty to appropriately curb mercury
emissions on the national level.”
“We
are dedicating our legal resources to
fight EPA’s new rule, which fails
to protect our children from toxic mercury
emissions,” said Attorney General
Harvey. “It is an established medical
fact that mercury causes neurological
damage in young children, impairing their
ability to learn and even to play. EPA’s
emissions trading plan will allow some
power plants to actually increase mercury
emissions, creating hot spots of mercury
deposition and threatening communities.”
“These
rules will place thousands of children
at risk annually, even though the technology
to achieve more dramatic mercury reductions
has been in use for years,” said
Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell.
“The standards in the EPA rule are
far too weak to protect public health
and the environment and fail to uphold
the mandate of the Clean Air Act.”
New
Jersey is leading the coalition that filed
suit today in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The coalition also includes the Attorneys
General of California, Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico,
New York and Vermont. New Jersey will
challenge EPA’s cap-and-trade rule
on behalf of members of the coalition
once it is published in the Federal Register.
Coal-fired
power plants are the largest source of
uncontrolled mercury emissions, generating
48 tons of mercury emissions per year
nationwide. Exposure to the most toxic
form of mercury comes primarily from eating
contaminated fish and shellfish. However,
fish advisories, which have been adopted
by EPA, are not an adequate substitute
for appropriate regulation of mercury
emissions under the Clean Air Act.
Scientists
estimate up to 600,000 children may be
born annually in the United States with
neurological problems leading to poor
school performance because of mercury
exposure while in utero. Fish from waters
in 45 of our 50 states have been declared
unsafe to eat as a result of poisoning
from mercury. In New Jersey, there are
mercury consumption advisories for at
least one species of fish in almost every
body of water in the state.
New
Jersey’s efforts are being led by
Deputy Attorneys General Kevin Auerbacher,
Section Chief for Environmental Enforcement,
Jean Reilly and Christopher Ball.
EPA
studied the health hazards posed by toxic
emissions from power plants, including
mercury, and determined in 2000 that power
plants must be regulated under Section
112 of the Clean Air Act, which requires
that “maximum achievable control
technology” (MACT) be used to control
those emissions. The rule that EPA published
today improperly exempts power plants
from regulation under Section 112, reversing
EPA’s prior determination that the
strictest controls are necessary to protect
public health.
Under
EPA’s cap-and-trade rule, power
plants can elect, rather than reducing
their own mercury emissions, to purchase
emissions credits from other plants that
reduce emissions below targeted levels.
Cap-and-trade emission controls, while
sometimes appropriate for general air
pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
oxides, are inappropriate for mercury
because they can allow localized deposition
of mercury to continue unabated, perpetuating
hot spots and hot regions that can significantly
impact the health of individual communities.
A
strict MACT standard, as required by the
Clean Air Act, would reduce mercury emissions
to levels approximately three times lower
than the cap established in the new EPA
rule. EPA’s trading rule will reduce
mercury emissions from power plants from
the current level of about 48 tons per
year to 15 tons per year. MACT controls,
on the other hand, would reduce emissions
at each facility by about 90 percent,
reducing total mercury emissions from
power plants to about 5 tons per year.
Moreover, the new EPA rule extends for
10 years the deadline for compliance from
2008 to 2018, with full reductions not
expected until 2026 under the new rule.
In
contrast, New Jersey last year adopted
tough new restrictions on mercury emissions
from coal-fired power plants, iron and
steel melters, and municipal solid waste
incinerators. The rules will reduce in-state
mercury emissions by over 1,500 pounds
annually and reduce emissions from New
Jersey’s coal-fired power plants
by about 90 percent. Despite New Jersey’s
aggressive efforts to protect the public
from mercury exposure, stronger federal
action than the new EPA rule is needed
since more than one-third of mercury deposition
in New Jersey is from sources in upwind
states.