Local Issues: Air & Water Quality - Mercury

New State Mercury Rules Being Considered

Sierra Club Comments Submitted to NDEQ

By Camellia Watkins, Conservation Organizer
September 2006

During June and July, the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) held three stakeholders meetings in regard to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. Here are the comments submitted to Mike Linder, director of the NDEQ, on behalf of the Sierra Club.

Mercury is a highly toxic chemical with effects on the central nervous system comparable to those of lead, especially for fetuses and very young children whose brains are still developing. Children and fetuses exposed to mercury can suffer from poor attention span, poor language development, impaired memory and vision, problems processing information, and impaired fine motor coordination. As many as 630,000 children may be born each year with unhealthy levels of mercury in their blood, according to a recent study by the Environmental Protection Agency. According to an EPA fact sheet released in May 2003, mercury advisories have increased 138 percent from 1993 to 2003.

Recognizing all of this data, the Sierra Club does not think that the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) will do enough to reduce the risk of mercury poisoning for Americans. Therefore the Sierra Club does not support the adoption of these rules by the state of Nebraska and instead recommends the adoption of the Clean Air Act MACT (Maximum Achievable Control Technology) standards for mercury reduction.

Unlike Iowa and Missouri , Nebraska’s law does not mandate that the state adopt federal environmental regulations. The Nebraska legislature had the foresight to give the NDEQ the flexibility to design rules that will better protect Nebraska residents, in case that federal regulations do not offer sufficient protections. The CAMR regulations, as currently designed, will fall short in fully reducing the risks of mercury poisoning.

Nebraska must use its autonomy to find a better way.

The Sierra Club recommends that Nebraska seek a total reduction rate of 80 percent versus the 57 percent reduction required by EPA.

Several of the utility districts and the Nebraska Power Association have commented that “EPA has conducted and reviewed years of scientific research on mercury in developing the Clean Air Mercury Rule.” However, according to an evaluation report from EPA released in May, two key studies support the need for additional monitoring to ensure that the EPA’s analysis has properly estimated the contribution of local, regional, and global sources on U.S. deposition. The study results were [not] available until after the CAMR rules were issued and thus were not taken into consideration during EPA’s decision-making process.

The studies raise serious concerns about EPA’s ability to properly monitor the effect of cap-and-trade on mercury deposition. EPA has little or no ability to monitor the development of hot spots of mercury around utilities that buy mercury pollution credits and so are allowed to emit high levels of mercury.

The red flags the reports raise about cap-and-trade are too important to ignore. The Sierra Club has continuously opposed the trading of mercury. Mercury tends to settle from the atmosphere back to the ground in relatively short distances compared to other pollutants, and there is a strong potential for hot spots to develop around power plants that choose to purchase credits to comply instead of actually reducing emissions.

The Sierra Club does not support the trading of mercury emission credits, interstate or intrastate. However, if Nebraska decides to implement a trading program we offer the following recommendations for management of the trading program.

1. No new unit set-asides – Nebraska City II and Whelan will be considered existing units
   
   During the stakeholder meetings several utility representatives agreed with the Sierra Club on this exemption.
   
   Sierra Club believes that new units should be required to seek non-mercury-producing sources of energy production or install best achievable control technology (BACT), which, according to utility representatives, is more easily adaptable to newer units than old units.
2. Nebraska should only permit intrastate trading
   
   There was some discussion on this issue during the stakeholder meetings. However, while the utilities said they would prefer interstate trading, they said intrastate trading could be workable and was preferred to no trading at all. In the spirit of compromise, intrastate is the recommendation at this point.
   
   Due to concerns about the risks of hotspots still being researched, the Sierra Club believes it is beneficial for the community and utilities to opt out of the interstate trading program until the available science has reached a consensus. At that point, the state can decide, if necessary, to opt into the national interstate trading program. However, if Nebraska starts out in the national trading program, there will be no option to change if science demonstrates negative health effects due to mercury trading.
3. NDEQ should hold 10 percent of the Nebraska allocation to be distributed as indicated:
   
   Five percent of the allocation should be distributed on an application basis as an incentive for renewable energy, conservation, and waste management program development.
   
   The NDEQ needs to reserve some leverage to encourage the implementation of non-mercury-producing energy and conservation programs, such as wind power. Some of the utility representatives said they are starting to implement this kind of programming, so it should not be difficult for utilities to earn these credits.
   
   The other 5 percent should be set aside for the Nebraska intrastate trading market.
   
   The fees should be competitive to market cost, and the money raised should be used to pay for mercury reduction education programs and projects for other mercury emitters (small businesses and households) that are not regulated.
   
   The intent of this recommendation is to address the utility representatives’ concern that other small sources are emitting mercury and are yet to be regulated.
4. Corporate management must be certified in mercury management and reduction before receiving emission reduction credits to begin trading.
   
   Pollution prevention training in mercury-source-reduction methods should be required because reduction of mercury in power plants and other major sources is generally an issue of corporate awareness and behavior change. Other states have used this methodology through the Toxic Use Reduction Planner certification and have been successful in educating managers on pollution reduction. If NDEQ is going to allow trading of such a hazardous toxin it only makes sense that all managers are adequately trained/informed about the rules in order to be good "actors" during this process.

During the stakeholder meetings, the idea of a State of the Science Review was introduced. The Sierra Club fully supports this idea due to so much being unknown about mercury emissions, ranging from the risks of trading to the quantities emitted from each source and to the availability of efficient control technology.

The final recommendation of the Sierra Club to the NDEQ is to err on the side of overprotection in the development of these regulations. Doing so will allow Nebraska utilities to play “catch up” in the case of science determining that CAMR is a bigger risk than an asset or the pending CAMR lawsuit is decided in favor of the plaintiffs. On the other hand if the opposite occurs and CAMR works, Nebraska will be ahead of the curve and can be viewed as a leader in mercury reduction for the country thanks to the leadership and guidance of the NDEQ.

If you would like more information about Nebraska’s CAMR rulemaking process, or to RSVP for the Mercury Hair Testing event, please contact Cammy Watkins at 402-551-9480, or by email at camellia.watkins@sierraclub.org. If you would like to submit your own comments to Mike Linder you can do so at the following address:

A version of this article originally appeared in the September 2006 issue of the Missouri Valley Sierran