Mercury rules face Friday vote

Aug 16 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Nancy Gaarder Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Under pressure from public power districts, Nebraska environmental regulators have abandoned, for now, any talk of controlling mercury pollution more aggressively than what is required by new federal rules.

As a result, the State Environmental Quality Council will vote Friday on a proposed method for dealing with mercury emissions that has been criticized by public health groups nationally as being inadequate to protect human health, especially the health of children.

Mercury is believed to harm a child's cognitive and motor skills and can lead to difficulties in school. Mercury, which occurs naturally in the environment, is released into the air when coal is burned. When those emissions settle into water, a more harmful type of mercury is formed and works its way up the food chain.

The primary way people are exposed to mercury is through eating contaminated fish.

The federal plan that Nebraska proposes to adopt was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency and relies on slowly moving toward a nationwide reduction of 70 percent.

Unlike many of the EPA's pollution standards, this one does not require all power plants to cut back mercury emissions. Instead, the EPA has set a national limit and generally will allow industry to sort out where those reductions will occur.

The government will give utilities "mercury credits" that they can trade. If a utility determines it is not cost effective to install mercury reduction equipment, it can buy credits from a utility that made more cutbacks than it had to.

About half the states are adopting standards that are more rigorous than the federal guidelines.

Most states around Nebraska are adopting the federal rule without adding restrictions.

One of the chief criticisms of the federal program is its potential to create mercury "hot spots" in areas where utilities trade for mercury credits rather than install pollution equipment.

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality records, including e-mails and correspondence obtained by The World-Herald through the state's open records law, indicate internal concern at the agency about hotspots. However, the head of the department says research doesn't support those worries.

When the EPA was drafting its rules in 2004, Shelley Kaderly, air quality division administrator for the department, wrote the federal agency that her department did not support the EPA's proposed reliance on trading, because "some communities will be exposed to higher levels."

Mike Linder, department director, said this week that "the evidence wasn't there for the hot-spots issue."

"I don't know how you disprove something that you don't think is an issue," Linder said.

Department records also detail the involvement by Nebraska utilities in drafting the state's rules.

Last summer, the department held three public meetings to take suggestions and laid out options that included stricter standards.

As a follow-up to those meetings, individual utilities and the Nebraska Power Association wrote the department asking that Nebraska adopt the federal rule without modifications.

Writing on behalf of the utility industry in September 2006, Jay Holmquist, then-president of the Nebraska Power Association, told the department that going beyond the federal rule is "scientifically unfounded" and will raise costs with little environmental benefit.

Nebraska's proposed rules, as written, do not include the stricter options laid out by the department's staff last year, nor suggestions from the public. Instead, the state's proposed regulations hew closely to the federal minimum as requested by Nebraska utilities. A few modest changes were made at their request.

"(Utilities) are pretty much writing the rules," said Cammy Watkins, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in Omaha, who attended the public meetings and also has met privately with the department. "NDEQ completely bows down to them."

Linder, the head of the department, said the agency has to have a good understanding of how its regulations will affect those who must abide by them. There was no compelling reason, he said, to go beyond the federal standard.

In terms of public health, Linder said, Nebraska will benefit from the nationwide reduction in mercury. This is a good first step, and as more is learned, additional changes can be made, Linder said.

Holmquist said Wednesday that Nebraska utilities weren't trying to dictate to the department.

"(We were) presenting them with a common sense approach," he said.

Worldwide, U.S. power plants account for less than 1 percent of mercury emissions, according to the EPA. Within the United States, electric power plants are the last major unregulated source of mercury. In Nebraska, power plant emissions accounted for about 80 percent of the state's mercury emissions in 2004, according to the department.