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Delaware’s congressional delegation wasted no time, March 15, in criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) new, court-ordered air pollution standards for mercury.
Sen. Tom Carper and Congressman Mike Castle called the clean air mercury rule regulating emissions from coal-fired power plants shortsighted.
“The new EPA rule for mercury doesn’t adequately address mercury pollution at Indian River power plant or any other major polluter in Delaware,” said Carper. “We should be able to do much better than this rule.”
Castle also weighed in against the rule.
“The federal government should be doing everything in its power to strengthen their policy, not weaken it.”
The EPA’s new rule notes that U.S. coal-fired power plants emit mercury in three different forms: oxidized and particulate mercury, which are likely to deposit within the United States; and elemental mercury which travels hundreds and thousands of miles before depositing to land or water.
In the Delaware Toxic Release Inventory report issued in April 2003, Indian River Power Plant was listed as the worst air polluting facility in the state, emitting 2,433,625 pounds of toxics into the air, water and land in 2001.
Among those toxic releases, Indian River Power Plant, a coal-fired operation, emitted 89 pounds of mercury compounds into the air and 102 pounds of mercury onto the land. It ranked as the third worst emitter of mercury compounds in the state, behind the now closed DuPont nylon plant in Seaford and Conectiv’s Edge Moor/Hay Road plant in New Castle County.
EPA Acting Administrator Steve Johnson said the rule marks the first time the United States has regulated mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Johnson said the United States contributes about 3 percent of the global mercury emissions, with about 1 percent of that coming from coal-fired power plants.
But Johnson noted the seriousness of mercury pollution, saying the highly toxic element is found in fish here at home and from around the world. Once emitted into the environment, mercury accumulates in organisms from the bottom to the top of the food chain.
The new EPA rule proposes to limit emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants, including NRG Energy’s Indian River Power Plant near Millsboro and Conectiv’s Edge Moor plant in New Castle County.
The rule creates a market-based cap-and-trade system nationwide that would permanently cap utility mercury emissions in two phases. The first phase cap is 38 tons per year beginning in 2010, with the final cap set at 15 tons a year beginning in 2018.
“The new standard will not adequately protect Delawareans or the rest of the country from a potent neurotoxin that EPA has determined to be a serious health threat,” said Sen. Tom Carper. “Congress should pass multi-pollutant reductions at every power plant, as I have proposed. Only through comprehensive clean air legislation that restricts mercury and other pollutants will we achieve the kind of air quality all Americans deserve.”
Congressman Mike Castle issued a statement saying the ruling sets a dangerous precedent to permit plants to choose which plants will receive pollution controls, thus allowing for possible mercury level increases in certain areas.
“I believe aggressive action to control mercury emissions can have important and rapid ecological and human health benefits,” he said.
Castle noted that mercury has been found in the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, Beck’s Pond, Silver Lake in Dover, St. Jones River and two wells on Long Neck. Advisory warnings have been issued by the state advising against people eating fish caught in those bodies of water.
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