State Sees Proposed Mercury Limits Hurting Coal Output

State Sees Proposed Mercury Limits Hurting Coal Output

Sep 07 - State Journal, The

West Virginia's black gold and the mercury embedded in it are targets of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

The government's goal is to reduce mercury air pollution from coal-fired electricgenerating plants from 48 tons annually now to 15 tons per year in 2018. Sixteen plants in the state are currently affected. According to the state Division of Air Quality, their estimated collective emissions were approximately 2.5 tons in 2000.

Of human sources, which comprise 60 percent of global releases, coal-fired power plants emit one-third of U.S. industrial emissions. Natural emitters comprise 40 percent of global discharges. Global re- emission of historically emitted mercury from all sources is part of the earth's mercury balance.

Consumers use the metal everywhere. Electrical equipment, batteries, fluorescent light bulbs and even some dental amalgams contain it. So does medical and scientific equipment. It's in lighted athletic shoes and old latex and oil-based paints, as well as solvents, dyes and pigments, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics and fungicides for seed and turf.

A damaging form is methylmercury, a water-soluble neurotoxin that accumulates in fish. The National Academy of Sciences said children of women who, during pregnancy, consume large amounts of fish and seafood are at highest risk. To protect consumers of freshwater and estuarine fish and shellfish tissue, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established advisory levels for those food sources.

The 1994 settlement of a 1992 Natural Resources Defense Council lawsuit prompted EPA to set Dec. 31, 2004, as the deadline for establishing power-plant mercury rules. However, NRDC is now allowing the agency until March 15,2005.

EPA proposed three alternatives on Jan. 30. Two were through CAAA 1990 sections 111 and 112 (n), respectively, through a cap-and- trade program that allows companies to use a market-focused strategy The other was through section 112(d) for control technology, which is required in all cases. EPA believes removal also will come through controls for sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides at power plants. Too, the proposed Clean Air Interstate Rule may give more reductions.

West Virginia supports EPA's proposed cap-and-trade rule, in conjunction with CAIR, said Cabinet Secretary Stephanie R. Timmermeyer of the Department of Environmental Protection in a June 29 letter to EPA.

But she said the Mountain State agrees with Illinois, Indiana and Ohio "that the proposed regulations are biased against bituminous coal."

Gov Bob Wise expressed alarm to President Bush. Calling the proposed limits "impediments" to "opportunities to capitalize on our domestic energy resources," the governor said in a July 1 letter, "I am concerned the current (proposed) mercury emission regulations ... would disadvantage eastern bituminous coal production."

If power generators switch to subbituminous to avoid installing add-on controls, there also might be health consequences because of mercury emission levels by coal type, Wise said.

"This approach not only hurts the marketability of eastern coal, it also poses health hazards through the allowance of additional mercury emissions from subbituminous coals," he wrote.

Subbituminous coals from western states typically have lower heating (Btu) values than bituminous coal. Utilities that choose to burn subbituminous coal to avoid add-on controls would use more of the fuel to attain the same energy level that can be achieved through burning bituminous coal.

American Electric Power mentioned coal bias in its June 29 comments to EPA. It recommended that the maximum-available control technology - MACT - baseline should allow choices of control strategies to ensure "that one coal is not favored over another."

Based on computer-simulation modeling done by Palo Alto, Calif.- based Electric Power Research Institute, AEP also said, "Even with a 70 percent reduction in (total) U.S. power plant mercury emissions (of an estimated 48 tons per year) to 15 tons, U.S. mercury deposition would change on an average (of only) 6.9 percent."

Why?

About 70 percent of domestic utility mercury emissions are dispersed globally, EPRI said in its June 16 comments to EPA. Also, modeling reveals that about 75 percent of deposited mercury in the U.S. "originates in other countries or from other continents. Global inventories show nearly half of the anthropogenic (human-generated) emissions to the atmosphere coming from Asia."

To support its assertions, EPRI researchers in aircraft tracked mercury in 2001 and 2002 from China across the Pacific Ocean, moving toward the U.S. They found "nearly 700 tons per year of new mercury being transported in that manner." Above California, EPRI found "two distinct plumes of mercury, tracked by wind data to mainland Asian source regions, crossing into the United States and moving across the country."

Another major issue is that the federal government still does not know mercury's exact behavior in the environment-nor whether it's naturally occurring or humangenerated mercury causing problems.

In its January proposal, EPA said there is only a "plausible link" between emissions "from industrial and combustion sources in the U.S. and methylinercury in fish. ...(But) given the current scientific understanding of the environmental fate and transport of this element (mercury), it is not possible to quantify how much of the methylmercury in fish consumed by the U.S. population is contributed by U.S. emissions relative to other sources of (mercury) Hg [such as natural sources and re-emissions from the global pool]."

Therefore, the agency declared the relationship between mercury reductions from utilities and methylmercury in fish "cannot be calculated in a quantitative manner with confidence."

Another major issue concerns MACT The legislation and its rules prescribe it, yet it a viable control technology remains inadequately demonstrated and not commercially available. No one knows when either will occur. Also, questions exist about the validity of EPA's standards-support emission-testing program, including sufficient plants tested and whether some facilities labeled bituminous actually should be.

Finally, control costs could approach $4.5 billion annually, the Tennessee Valley Authority said. That translates to nearly $200 million per ton of mercury. That is 1 million times higher than the per-ton cost for sulfur oxides control from power plants and 100,000 times higher than costs for nitrogen oxides control, according to TVA.

Given the legal, technical, scientific and policy issues, the path to control of power-plant mercury air pollution will continue to be as slippery as the metal itself is-and, according to some, economically unfriendly to West Virginia coal.