Failed Mercury Resolution Disappoints Connecticut Senators and Environmentalists
By Mandy Kozar
WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 – Connecticut Democratic Senators Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd have expressed outrage over Tuesday’s failed effort to toughen federal regulations on mercury emissions into the air.
At issue was a Senate resolution that would have overturned an Environmental Protection Agency rule that Dodd, Lieberman and other environmental advocates say allows power plants to emit too much mercury pollution.
“The Senate had a real opportunity to pass a resolution that would directly improve the health of thousands of people in Connecticut and around the country by reversing a harmful rule that does little to reduce power plant mercury emissions,” Dodd said in a Wednesday press release.
The resolution, defeated by a narrow 51-47 vote, was co-sponsored by a bipartisan Senate group that believes the EPA rules do not do enough to reduce mercury emissions caused by U.S. power plants.
“It is clear the EPA has not lived up to its responsibility to follow the law and impose tough standards that would cut mercury emissions substantially below today’s levels,” Lieberman said in a Wednesday statement .
Opponents of the rule say that it conflicts with the Clean Air Act requirement that industries employ the “maximum achievable control technology” to reduce mercury pollution.
The rule is based on a “trade and cap” system that allows plants that are producing more than the allowed mercury emissions to buy credits from plants that are producing less than the permitted amount.
“There needs to be stronger regulations,” said Jonathan Banks, policy director of Clear the Air, a New England environmental group.
The EPA rule calls for a 70 percent emission reduction by the year 2018, a timeline that Banks said does very little to improve current conditions.
“That’s just a lot of mercury over the course of a long time,” he said. “The stuff just builds up in the environment, and the longer you go without reducing it the more you’re building up in the environment and the longer it takes to cycle out of it.”
Mercury is a neurotoxin that takes 10,000 years to leave the environment. Today, every freshwater source in Connecticut, as with many states in the Northeast, has been issued mercury advisories, and EPA health officials warn that children and pregnant women should limit their fish intake to avoid damage to the central nervous system, brain and kidneys.
But EPA officials issued a press release responding that the rule “is the first time the United States or any other country in the world has regulated mercury emissions from power plants.”
Although the Senate resolution failed to pass, the senators and environmentalists are still hoping that the EPA rule can be overturned in court.
“It is beyond belief that the Senate would choose to uphold regulations that require next to no affirmative action on the part of industry,” Lieberman said. “It is my hope that the courts will step in and follow the Clean Air Act and send the rule back to the EPA to get it right.”
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