Report links mercury on Cape Cod to global pollution

Nov 1 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Doug Fraser Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.

Unlike many other states, Massachusetts significantly reduced mercury emissions coming from electric power plants and incinerators in recent years.

According to a study by the Environmental Integrity Project, mercury emissions in the state dropped from 292 pounds in 2000 to 97 pounds in 2008.

Now, Massachusetts is about to embark on a second phase to bring mercury emissions down by 95 percent from 1999 levels by 2012, but it could have little impact on the Cape and Islands.

A combination of low-mercury coal, technological improvements that remove mercury from the smokestack and use of other fuels, has had an immediate effect lowering mercury levels in fish in the northeast portion of the state, said Michael Hutcheson, head of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection long-term mercury monitoring program.

But there is evidence that the mercury affecting ponds here on the Cape could come from as far away as China, said John Colman, a water quality scientist with the United States Geological Survey in Northboro.

"The startling thing about the Outer Cape ponds is that they are in a national park. There are no obvious signs of industry, and they are far from mainland sources of mercury, but some of the ponds have the highest concentration of mercury in fish tissues of any in the state," said Colman. "It's pretty clear you could be in the middle of nowhere and still have a mercury problem."

The state Department of Public Health has posted advisories against eating fish taken from six ponds within the Seashore park. Their status hasn't changed over the past five years, Hutcheson said.

At the annual Wellfleet "State of the Harbor" nature conference on Nov. 6, Colman will preview his recently completed study that compared the mercury levels in fish and soil samples in ponds in the Cape Cod National Seashore and similar ponds and fish in Olympic peninsula in Washington state.

Mercury that drifts up into the atmosphere from power plant smokestacks does not easily enter the food web. It is in a very stable state in the atmosphere and can drift up there for as much as a year carried with the wind. It isn't water soluble, and won't bond to water and come down with rain until it attaches to oxygen. One of the main oxidizers is ozone, and cities with poor air quality are thought to have a higher level of mercury in their rain, Colman said.

Because of its proximity to travel corridors and industry, the Cape Cod National Seashore suffers from poor air quality in the summer, including ground-level ozone, that ranks it in the bottom seven for national parks.

When mercury falls into a pond, as rain or as a particulate, it is converted by bacteria in low-oxygen environments, like the bottom of a pond, to methyl mercury. Those bacteria and algae are consumed by organisms that are in turn eaten, and the mercury gets passed up the food chain to apex pond predators like yellow perch and large mouth bass. The mercury lodges in fatty tissue and accumulates over time as the fish ages and grows.

A premise of the United States mercury emission cleanup is that significant reductions in our power plant discharge will lead to big improvements in mercury accumulation in the environment. With prevailing winds blowing west to east, the bulk of the mercury deposition was thought to be downwind of major power plants located in the Midwest and Southern portions of the country. The Western states, with the exception of Texas, were thought to be relatively free of this kind of mercury contamination.

But Colman's study shows similar levels of mercury accumulation in the soil samples and fish tissue on both coasts. That led him to conclude there is a global factor -- emissions from China for example that may be a big player in areas that are relatively remote from power generation plants or incinerators.

Mercury emissions from U.S. coal-fired plants pale are less than 5 percent of the total global output. Nonetheless, it is hard to conceive of a national mercury reduction plan that doesn't include a lot of international pressure on other nations to do likewise, Coleman said.

"The idea that burning coal is screwing up fish all over the Northern Hemisphere is kind of terrifying," he said.

The DEP did the fish tissue analysis for Colman's study. Hutcheson has not yet seen anything more than a report abstract. He cautioned against drawing major conclusions from one research effort. Still he agreed that the U.S. could do a lot more to press the issue internationally.

A global problem

But this doesn't mean local and national cleanup efforts are meaningless.

Far from it, said Shanna Cleveland, a staff attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation's Clean Energy and Climate Change Program.

"Mercury is a global problem but it is also a local and regional problem that we have some power to control," she said. Cleveland cited a 2007 report by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation that found that 55 percent of mercury deposition in New Hampshire and Massachusetts was from local emissions. Forty-four percent was from local power plants.

"Mercury is to a large degree a local pollution problem. Knowing we have the solutions, but still allowing the emissions that cause birth defects and child developmental problems is not right," Cleveland said.

Little progress made

In recent years, environmentalists fought a successful battle to reverse cap and trade policies instituted in 2005 under the Bush administration that allowed energy companies to avoid cleaning up their plants by paying others who did. The underlying principle was that regional impacts were secondary to an overall national reduction. The result has been very little progress nationally, according to the Environmental Integrity Project report.

Power plant emissions barely dipped by just 2 percent between 2000 and 2008, from 47.8 tons in 2000 to 44.7. That is far off the Bush administration estimate of 31 to 34 tons by 2010. Emissions actually increased for 27 of the top 50 mercury-producing plants between 2007 and 2008 the study showed.

"The U.S. does have to be more engaged in international policies, and we do see a reticence in doing that," said Cleveland. "But that doesn't mean we don't continue to set an example by reducing emissions from our own power plants."

Cleveland pointed to the U.S. effort to address a hole in the ozone layer caused by industrial compounds released into the atmosphere globally.

"The U.S. was one of the leaders in convincing other countries to come together implement that solution ... by coming up with products that could be substituted for products that were eating the ozone layer," she said.

By holding utility companies to using available technologies, the EPA concluded that mercury emissions would drop by 70 percent to 15 tons per year, the Integrity Project reported.