Fighting Mercury Pollution in Georgia
SELC urges Georgia to strengthen federal rules, protect air quality
More than 15 percent of Georgia’s children are born every year with dangerous blood mercury levels, putting them at risk for delayed neurological milestones, cerebral palsy, reduced test scores, and delays and lifelong deficits in learning abilities.
Mercury, which is deposited in waters and moves up the food chain as we eat contaminated fish, is a dangerous neurotoxin that lowers IQ levels and causes permanent damage to the nervous system. Children, including fetuses and breast-fed babies, are at highest risk.
©USFWS
Over 2,000 miles of Georgia rivers contain fish that are unsafe to eat because of high levels of mercury emitted by nearby power plants. Young children and infants are most at risk of mercury contamination.
Most mercury in the state's air and water come from the state's old, coal-fired power plants. Georgia power plants account for 76 percent of the state's mercury emissions. The problem is only getting worse. Toxic mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in Georgia increased by approximately 980 pounds from 2003 to 2004, according to new information compiled by environmental and public health organizations from utility reports and EPA. This is particularly troubling for the 1.25 million Georgia children who live within 30 miles of a power plant.
In addition, Georgia commercial fisherman landed over 8 million pounds of seafood in 2004, and recreational fishing has supported more than 10,000 jobs, and over $15 million in state tax collections. This economic future is threatened as all watersheds in the state are under fish advisories for mercury, making the seafood and freshwater fish caught there unsafe for human consumption. In fact, Georgia fish have two times the average mercury concentration considered safe for women of childbearing age who eat fish twice a week.
For these reasons, EPA rightly determined in 2000 that mercury emitted from coal-fired power plants must be regulated as a "hazardous pollutant" and be subject to the most state-of-the-art pollution controls. This common-sense approach to mercury pollution ended in 2005 when EPA, without scientific evidence, declared that mercury would not be regulated by requiring plants to adopt the most effective pollution controls to curb their mercury emissions. Instead, through adoption of the Clean Air Mercury Rule, EPA attempts to control mercury through a cap-and-trade scheme that will delay clean-up by years, allowing even the dirtiest power plants to continue to pollute by buying "credits" from a cleaner plant across the country.
Fortunately, Georgia does not have to allow these weak federal rules to damage its air and water quality.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD) is currently examining proposals aimed at regulating the amount of mercury that can be emitted from coal-burning power plants. In the fall of 2006, EPD released draft rules that were stronger than the federal rule. The public will have a chance to comment on the rules at a hearing at the end of January, and the state expects to reach a decision by the end of March. However, SELC will continue to advocate for even stronger regulations that include requiring the state's power plant permits to establish caps on mercury emissions, as well as the need to monitor mercury emissions more closely in the future.
