By the time the Environmental Protection Agency gets serious about reducing mercury emissions, Bill Cooke said both of his sons, now ages 4 and 14, will be adults.

That is simply too long, the Schoharie County farmer said Sunday.

"I have one message for the Bush administration: They need to do the right thing about our wives, about our children, about our future," Cooke said.

Cooke was among the hundreds of residents, students and politicians from across the state who gathered at the University at Albany on Sunday to speak against the EPA's proposed rule on mercury power plant pollution.

"We are here today to tell the EPA ... their plan is simply unacceptable," said Jason Babbie, environmental analyst for the New York Public Interest Research Group. "What they're doing is fundamentally wrong. It's endangering our health, it's endangering our future."

The EPA is proposing a 70 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2018. The plan, however, allows the trading of so-called pollution credits, meaning not all power plants would have to reduce mercury pollution, opponents said. Credits also could be used to defer full enforcement, which could impact the Northeast, they added. New York has had problems with acid rain.

Busloads of people from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Buffalo, Syracuse, Oswego and Cortland came to Sunday's event to deliver thousands of letters from other residents criticizing the proposal.

They said the rally and public hearing was organized, because the EPA chose not to hold a hearing on the matter in New York state.

NYPIRG said the EPA in 2001 presented a stronger mercury standard to the Edison Electric Institute that stated mercury emissions could be reduced by 90 percent. The EPA has until December to make a final ruling on the 70 percent standard.

"They need to come up with a much better answer," Babbie said.

Those at the rally also criticized President Bush and his administration.

"We have a President who gave the State of the Union address and what did he say about the environment? Absolutely nothing," said Angela Ledford, director of Clear the Air in Washington. "We're not letting the President off the hook, we're not letting the EPA off the hook."

Mercury emissions have been linked to neurological and developmental disabilities in children whose mothers have eaten contaminated fish. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported one in 12 women have unsafe levels of mercury in their bodies for a fetus. In 2003, the state Department of Health issued fish consumption advisories for 40 water bodies in the state because of contamination.

"You don't have to go far to find mercury," said wildlife pathologist Ward Stone. "Patroon Creek has lots of mercury in it, and if we go to the Adirondacks, what do we find? Signs warning us not to eat fish because of mercury."

The EPA needs to step up to the plate now -- not later -- because it's the "Environmental Protection Agency, not the Everything is Pollutable Agency," Cooke said.

At the end of the rally, Babbie told the crowd that "mercury makes you dumb. It seems Bush and his whole administration have had too much mercury. We all know where the EPA can stick their proposal."