TRENTON
– Attorney General Peter C. Harvey
is filing suit today for a coalition of
eleven states challenging a new federal
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
rule that establishes a cap-and-trade
system for regulating harmful mercury
emissions from power plants. The rule
will delay meaningful emission reductions
for many years and perpetuate hot spots
of local mercury deposition, posing a
grave threat to the health of children.
“New
Jersey is taking the lead in this fight
to protect children from mercury exposure,
which can lead to severe developmental
disabilities,” said Acting Governor
Richard J. Codey. “We’ve adopted
tough rules to reduce in-state mercury
emissions, but we need the federal EPA
to regulate them adequately at the national
level. More than one-third of the mercury
deposited in New Jersey comes from outside
our borders.”
“These
rules are deeply flawed and contrary both
to science and the law,” said Attorney
General Harvey. “Mercury is a potent
neurotoxin that damages the developing
brains of fetuses and young children.
EPA has failed to meet its obligation
under the Clean Air Act to adopt rules
that will protect our children from toxic
power plant emissions.”
“A
cap-and-trade program for mercury further
dilutes an already weak rule and creates
the risk of perpetuating dangerous mercury
hotspots that threaten the health of our
communities and children,” said
Department of Environmental Protection
(DEP) Commissioner Bradley M. Campbell.
“This rule betrays the public’s
trust and fails to meet the protections
mandated by the Clean Air Act.”
The
rule was published today in the Federal
Register. The states previously filed
suit against a separate EPA rule published
March 29 that removed power plants from
the list of pollution sources subject
to stringent pollution controls under
the federal Clean Air Act. EPA announced
both the de-listing rule and the cap-and-trade
rule on March 15. The trading scheme established
by the rules will allow power plants to
purchase emissions reduction credits from
other plants that reduce emissions below
targeted levels, rather than install stringent
controls to reduce mercury emissions at
their own plants.
Through
mercury deposition, mercury enters the
aquatic food chain and ultimately is consumed
by humans ingesting certain types of fish,
resulting in severe harm, particularly
when ingested by pregnant or nursing mothers
or young children.
EPA's
rule fails to adequately address the threat
posed to young children by mercury. Children
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, impaired visual and motor
functions, and reduced IQ. Also, mercury
has been linked, more recently, to increased
heart attacks in adult males.
Attorney
General Harvey is filing suit in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
on behalf of the coalition, which includes
the Pennsylvania Environmental Secretary
and the Attorneys General of California,
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Vermont
and Wisconsin. The case is being handled
by Deputy Attorneys General Kevin Auerbacher,
Section Chief for Environmental Enforcement,
Jean Reilly and Christopher Ball.
Coal-fired
power plants are the largest source of
uncontrolled mercury emissions, generating
48 tons of mercury emissions per year
nationwide. 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
near plants that choose not to reduce
emissions, perpetuating hot spots and
hot regions that can significantly impact
the health of individual communities.
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 de-listing rule that
EPA published on March 29 exempts power
plants from regulation under Section 112,
reversing EPA’s prior determination
that the strictest controls are necessary
to protect public health.
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 cap-and-trade
rule EPA published today, and would do
so far more quickly. EPA’s cap-and-trade
rule will yield little immediate reductions
in mercury emissions from power plants
from the current level of 48 tons per
year, and will delay even modest reductions
by more than a decade. MACT controls would
reduce emissions at every coal-fired power
plant by about 90 percent, to about 5
tons per year, with a compliance deadline
of 2008. The new EPA rule is not expected
to achieve even a reduction to 15 tons
per year until at least 2026
In
contrast, New Jersey last year adopted
tough new restrictions on mercury emissions
from coal-fired power plants, iron and
steel melters, and hospital and medical
waste 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.
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 the womb. 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.