Florida battles the EPA as the mercury rises

Florida officials battle EPA over mercury emissions plan[/u]
By JANINE A. ZEITLIN, [email protected]
April 11, 2004

Florida's lawmakers, public health officials and environmental advocates are waging a fierce battle against the way the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to curtail mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the nation's largest unregulated sources of mercury.

Mercury is released into Florida's air from coal-fired power plants and deposited into state waters and the Gulf of Mexico, where it's taken up by fish. The toxin is then passed to those who eat the fish.

All of Florida's fresh waters are tagged with mercury consumption advisories for three fish species and the state's coastal waters carry warnings for eight species. Lake Trafford in Collier County and Charlotte Harbor in Lee County are marked with mercury advisories.

The federal government recently heightened mercury warnings for women and children because mercury can harm growing brains and nervous systems of young children and developing fetuses.

Lawmakers and local environmental officials say the EPA proposal threatens the health of Florida's children and the state's seafood industry. Earlier this month, a coalition of 45 U.S. senators ?- including Florida's Bill Nelson and Bob Graham ?- sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt urging him to withdraw the proposal.


The EPA's proposed mercury rule pledges to reduce mercury emissions from coal power plants by 70 percent by 2018. Mercury is produced by the combustion of fossil fuels. While coal-fired power plants aren't the only contributor of mercury to the environment, they are the largest unregulated source of mercury in the nation.

Critics of the proposal say it gives industry too much leeway and time to reduce emissions. They say technology exists for a mercury emissions reduction by 90 percent by 2008, which was mandated under the Clinton Administration.

The proposal under the Bush Administration allows industries to swap pollution credits to meet a national cap.

A March Los Angeles Times investigation found that parts of the EPA's proposal under the Bush Administration contained paragraphs of verbatim language supplied to the agency by utility lobbyists.

The letter Senate lawmakers sent to Leavitt on April 1 urged the agency to think of the children and the environment.

"The Environmental Protection (Agency) current proposals on mercury fall far short of what the law requires, and they fail to protect the health of our children and our environment," the letters states. "According to many states, industry experts and past EPA analyses, the technology to dramatically clean up these plants is available and affordable."

Deposited in water, mercury can be converted to methylmercury by reacting with bacteria. In water, it's taken up by life through the food chain. The concentration swells in larger predator fish, like swordfish or king mackerel.

Nelson said he won't relent on an issue so important to Florida.

"We'll keep raising Cain with them," he said. "What their proposal would do is allow them, power plants, to trade those credits around. It would mean that a plant emitting a higher level of mercury doesn't have to do a thing about that. If you lived in that particular area, you might have a hazard to your health."

Jill Greenberg, Graham's spokeswoman, said the senator will take a similar hard stance against the proposal because, "There's a reason why (people) can't eat the fish in Tampa Bay."

The toxin can cause brain disorders in children and fetuses. In response to the senators' letter, the EPA released a statement saying Leavitt has asked for additional analysis on the existing proposal and pledged to reduce emissions by 70 percent without assigning a date.

EPA officials issued the official statement but couldn't be reached for comment.

The public has until April 30 to comment on the proposal, which is slated to be finalized by year's end.

Nelson and the Florida Public Interest Research Group tried to convince the EPA to hold a hearing in Florida with no success. The agency has hosted four public hearings nationwide.

Mercury threatens Florida's fish and the tourism dollars tangled with those fish, the senator wrote in his Jan. 30, 2004, letter request for the EPA to hold a hearing in Florida, noting that recreational fishing adds $4 billion a year to Florida's economy. Nelson said he never received a response.

The Florida Public Interest Research Group's push for a hearing was equally fruitless.

"Considering how important seafood is, Florida should be at the forefront of the debate on this issue," said Mark Ferrulo, Public Interest's executive director. "Fishing is just such an important way of life in our state that mercury pollution is having major consequences."

The nonprofit advocacy organization and other groups hosted their own hearing in Tampa earlier this month. The group taped the session and planned to send comments to the EPA.

While there are no coal-fired power plants in Southwest Florida, mercury can find its way into the area's waters and the Gulf of Mexico from industry in north and central Florida. The Fort Myers oil-fired power plant dating back to the 1950s switched to natural gas in 2002, nixing its mercury emissions.

Southwest Florida's environmental advocates say the proposal doesn't do enough to protect the region from mercury.

"Mercury is a toxic substance and it really doesn't work well to have this trading program for toxic substances," said Gary Davis, policy director at The Conservancy of Southwest Florida. "We don't have any coal-fired utilities in South Florida but there are some not far from here. It's not just looking at a local source."

Brad Cornell, environmental policy advocate for the Audubon Society in Collier County, said EPA's lack of a response to holding a hearing in Florida is "concerning."

"I don't believe anybody deserves to have higher mercury levels. That doesn't seem fair. With mercury, that's bad for everybody. Nobody should have that next to them," Cornell said.


More warnings


Lori Glenn loves fish but no longer eats it.

"I just don't think it's healthy anymore," said Glenn, a Bonita Springs environmentalist and the Conservation chairwoman for the local Sierra Club.

She said she didn't realize mercury was a problem in seafood until she became pregnant with her now 6-year-old daughter, Amanda. Her doctor told her to stop eating fish.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the EPA are recommending a similar caution against mercury-laden fish, such as albacore tuna, for women of childbearing age and young children.

With concern about mercury in tuna mounting, in March the agencies announced a long-awaited joint advisory warning women and young children to eat no more than one meal of albacore tuna a week and no more than two meals total, or 12 ounces, of lower mercury fish ?- such as salmon, catfish or canned light tuna ?- and shellfish a week.

Nearly 8 percent of American women of childbearing age have unsafe levels of mercury in their blood, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

EPA scientists recently found that 630,000 newborns in one year had blood mercury levels higher than what's deemed safe. Researchers are looking at whether there's a link between the apparent rise in autism rates in the last decade and mercury exposure in pediatric vaccines.

Lee and Collier health officials say mercury warnings for seafood are one of the first subjects they broach with expecting or hoping-to-become mothers.

"We talk about that (during) the first visit that they come to see us," said Linda Unger, an OB-GYN case manager at Physicians Primary Care, which has three offices in Lee County.

Unger's office recommends eating no more than 10 ounces of any kind of fish a week.

Collier County Health Department officials dole out the FDA and EPA recommendation when offering advice to expecting mothers.

"It's ideal if doctors do remember to mention this," said Deb Millsap, Collier County Health Department's director of nutrition and health education. "Everybody still believes fish is good for us but basically, with the recommendations they have, young children and women can receive the benefits of the fish without the harmful effects."

Public health groups say the EPA is sending mixed messages by putting out a strong mercury warning for pregnant women and children while at the same time proposing a rule that gives coal-fired power plants, the largest unregulated mercury sources, more leeway in reducing mercury emissions.

"We need to be very aggressive in getting the mercury out of the system. On one hand, the government accepts the serious risk mercury poses," said Kyle Kinner, legislative director for the Washington-based Physicians for Social Responsibility. "At the same time, they have essentially dropped the ball (on the mercury rule). . . There's ample evidence that they can quickly get to 90 percent but they haven't wanted to do that. It's pretty concerning."

Holly Binns, a Public Interest Research Group organizer, said the agency is putting industry alliances before the health of pregnant women and children.

"I don't think it's surprising that the proposed rule is far more favorable to the utility industry than pregnant women and young kids," she said. "Unfortunately, every proposal and power plant cleanup has been far more favorable to the energy companies."

Critics point to hefty campaign contributions from utility companies to the Bush Administration as one explanation why the presidential change has resulted in lesser mercury reductions over a longer time.

In the 2000 election cycle, electric utilities contributed nearly a half-million dollars to President Bush's campaign, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a D.C.-based nonpartisan research group.

Goods news for the Everglades


In the April 1 letter to the EPA to withdraw the proposed rule, the senators pointed to a 2003 study in Florida that showed drops in mercury emissions reduced the amount of mercury making its way into Everglades fish and birds.

While South Florida has no coal-fired power plants, the Everglades fell victim to large mercury emissions from municipal and medical waste incinerators in decades past. Scientists say South Florida relied on waste incinerators because the soggy land meant landfills weren't feasible.

"When we found mercury in fish and wildlife in the late '80s, it hit the news like a bombshell. At that time, there really wasn't much known on why mercury would be in the Everglades," said Tom Atkeson, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's mercury coordinator since 1992 and one of the study's authors.

The multi-agency study compared mercury levels in fish and birds in the Everglades before pollution controls were installed on incinerators to levels after pollution controls were installed and showed mercury concentration in fish and birds dropped 60 to 70 percent in the last decade.Mercury emissions from incinerators in South Florida, once the largest source of mercury emissions in the region, have dropped 99 percent since the mid-1980s because of pollution control policies adopted since then, the study reports.

No waste incinerators have been permitted in Florida since the Lee County plant, which burns garbage to produce electricity, began operating in 1994, state officials said.

An expansion to the Lee plant slated to open in late 2006 is the only waste-to-energy facility permitted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection since the original plant opened, state officials said.

The expansion will be allowed to produce .0168 pounds of mercury per hour, said Al Linero, a Florida DEP engineer. He said the plant is likely allowed .0336 pounds of mercury per hour in current operations.

While the Lee trash-burning plant does add mercury to the Everglades, scientists say it's about as clean as incineration can get.

"When it was built, it was the cleanest facility in the country by far that served to set the floor for everybody else. This may be looking at the world with rosy glasses but, yes, it's going to be adding some mercury but it's also quite a clean facility," Atkeson said.

Despite good news about the Everglades' lowered mercury levels, Davis of The Conservancy said Everglades fish have a long way to go before the mercury levels are safe for eating.

"You talk about encouraging recreation in the Everglades but sportsmen can't eat the fish ... which is a shame," he said.

Link to Naples Daily News