EPA, environmentalists say power plants need to reduce hazardous mercury emissions but don't agree how to do it

There is general agreement on the need to reduce the mercury emissions from coal and oil-burning power plants.

There is less agreement on the best way to accomplish that goal and what the target dates should be.

A mercury emissions proposal made public by the Environmental Protection Agency in December infuriated environmental groups that considered it a rollback of plans unveiled during the Clinton administration.

Critics contend that the new approach would delay major mercury reductions by 10 years and increase health risks because it allows the worst offenders to keep polluting.

The EPA and Bush administration have argued that giving utilities more time to research and develop cheaper pollution-control technologies would help keep consumer costs down and could lead to better technology to capture the mercury, a toxic pollutant that settles over waterways.

A fix is expensive, running into hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit plants.

That cost will ultimately find its way into light and heating bills.

For example, PNM spent nearly $80 million to install equipment to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from its San Juan plant in 1998. PNM says it is still trying to estimate what it would cost to comply with the proposed mercury rules.

But some argue that the health risks are significant. The EPA in 1998 branded mercury the nation's greatest public health risk of all the toxic pollutants it studied.

The primary danger to humans comes from eating fish caught in rivers, lakes and reservoirs. When mercury pollution settles on water, it is converted into a more toxic form, methyl-mercury, which concentrates in fish tissue. People who eat such fish risk brain and nervous system damage, health officials say.

New Mexico and 42 other states have issued advisories warning people to limit how often they eat fish, especially bass and walleye, from lakes, reservoirs and rivers, because the fish are contaminated with mercury.

An EPA report in 1998 said exposure to mercury, even at low levels, was similar to the effects of lead, which causes health problems such as kidney, brain or nervous system damage, especially in children and fetuses.

Coal and oil-burning power plants produce an estimated 40 percent of the nation's airborne mercury.

The plan

The EPA's new proposal outlines two possible methods to reduce the amount of power plant-produced mercury.

The first option follows EPA's Clinton-era recommendation by requiring plants to install technology currently available to reduce mercury emissions.

However, in its December proposal, the EPA set the required target of cutting annual emissions of mercury from the current 48 tons to 34 tons, a total of 29 percent, by the start of 2007.

During Clinton's administration, the EPA predicted that mercury emissions could be reduced to 5 tons, or by about 90 percent, by the end of 2007.

The 90 percent figure assumed that the technology was available to achieve that goal, EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman. The agency revised the goal to 29 percent because "we decided the 5-ton goal was not achievable by all plants," Bergman said.

Under the second option in the new proposal, the EPA would drop the requirement to install pollution-control technology. Instead, the EPA would set a mandatory declining cap on mercury emissions. Utilities that own heavy polluting plants could purchase pollution credits from utilities whose plants emit less mercury. The EPA would fix the mercury emissions cap at 15 tons in 2018, to achieve a 70 percent reduction from the current level.

Under this approach there is no requirement to install technology, but it makes clear that utilities must meet the cap. They have the flexibility to buy credits or research new technology, the EPA's Bergman said.

Critics and supporters can file comments during a 60-day period, which began Jan. 30. In addition, the agency plans to hold a hearing in Philadelphia on Feb. 25-26.

The EPA will consider changes based on the comments, then publish the rule before it becomes law.

State's slate

New Mexico's three coal-burning power plants produced 1,398 pounds of mercury in 2001, the most recent EPA figures available.

PNM's San Juan plant near Farmington produced 751 pounds; Arizona Public Service company's Four Corners plant, also near Farmington, produced 621 pounds; and Tri-State Generation and Transmission's Escalante plant near Grants produced 27 pounds.

Tri-State said existing pollution control equipment installed at its Escalante plant can reduce emissions enough to meet the proposed standard without modifications.

PNM and Arizona Public Service said they will wait for the final rule before deciding how to reduce mercury emissions.

"Philosophically, I believe that well-designed cap and trade programs have demonstrated their effectiveness in obtaining more cost-effective emission reductions than regulatory command and control programs," said PNM's president, chairman and CEO, Jeff Sterba.

PNM plans to file comments on both of the proposed options, he said.

PNM and other Western plants face special challenges in trying to lower emissions.

Coal burned at plants in the eastern United States emit oxidized mercury. That can be captured by technology used to cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, chemicals that produce smog and acid rain, said Nancy Norem, principal engineer in charge of compliance with air quality regulations at PNM's plants. That is the technology EPA cites when predicting attainable goals.

However, mercury produced from coal at the San Juan plant is emitted in an elemental, or vapor, form that is harder to capture with that technology and can travel hundreds of miles, said Norem.

There have been attempts to absorb mercury vapor emissions by using activated carbon, "but the performance and cost is still unknown," said George Offen, senior technical leader for emissions and combustion products management at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif.

While that technology is being developed, utilities said the concept of credits to meet goals is a good idea. Such credits have been successful in reducing emissions that produce acid rain, Norem said, echoing Sterba's words.

Regulation origins

The push to curb emissions began with amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990. They required the EPA to study toxic air pollution from power plants to determine whether more regulations were needed to protect public health. In a 1998 report to Congress, the agency concluded that, of all toxic pollution, mercury posed the greatest concern to public health and set a timetable to release a proposed rule by the end of 2003.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 showed that up to 60,000 children each year may be affected by exposure to mercury in the womb.

At about the same time, EPA concluded that available technology could reduce mercury emissions by up to 90 percent. But no rules were ever adopted.

Critics condemn the new rules for falling far short of that target.

"We don't think it's a good thing. We're seeing a lot of these (types of) rules weakened under the Bush administration," said Jon Goldstein, spokesman for the New Mexico Environment Department.

The new EPA proposal is gambling with people's health, said Jeanne Bassett, executive director of the New Mexico Public Interest Research Group.

"When we know something is a toxic chemical, why do we wait?" she said.

The Sierra Club has estimated that the EPA proposal will result in the release of nearly 300 tons of mercury emissions from power plants between 2008 and 2020 that could have been removed had the suggested target of 90 percent become the rule.

"I think that the Bush administration policies toward our environment -- be it air or water or public lands -- put our communities at risk," said Mary Wiper, associate representative at the New Mexico office of the Sierra Club.

Some other states, including New Jersey and Massachusetts, plan to issue their own mercury emission rules that exceed the proposed federal standards. New Jersey's rule would require a 90 percent mercury reduction by 2007. Massachusetts would require an 85 percent reduction by 2006, and 95 percent by 2012.

That route isn't open to New Mexico, where state law says air quality regulations can't be stricter than federal standards.