The Georgia Environmental Protection Division is in the process of developing a state rule that will regulate the emission of mercury from coal-fired power plants. Mercury—a dangerous neurotoxin that accumulates in fish, and Georgians who eat contaminated fish, is emitted largely by coal-fired power plants.

The good news is the state has not opted to adopt the too-little, too-late reductions in the federal rule finalized by the Bush administration. The bad news is that the plan under consideration has serious flaws. Currently, the rule fails to cap mercury pollution and allows polluters to export pollution to other states. To learn more read our comments to the Department of Natural Resources regarding the proposed state mercury rule.

Send an e-mail to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division urging them to reduce mercury emissions from power plants by 90 percent.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin that harms people and the environment. Developing fetuses and children are especially at risk as even low-level mercury exposure can impede brain development, causing learning disabilities, impaired memory and motor skills, and decreased IQ.

In early 2004, EPA scientists estimated that one in six women of childbearing age in the U.S. has sufficiently high mercury blood levels to put 630,000 of the four million American babies born each year at risk of neurological damage. A recent study published by the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine put a dollar value on one aspect of this health risk. In the study, “Mental Retardation and Prenatal Methylmercury Toxicity,” Mount Sinai’s pediatricians found that in 1566 American children each year, mercury causes a big enough loss in IQ to result in mental retardation, with a monetary cost to our economy of approximately $2 billion per year.

Georgia’s power plants emit 76 percent of the mercury that ends up in our state’s waterways where it accumulates in the fish that we ultimately eat. This pollution has resulted in mercury-related fish consumption advisories that cover every mile of our coast, more than 41,000 acres of our lakes and 2,500 miles of our rivers.

But we can clean it up. Inexpensive, modern pollution controls can capture 90 percent of a power plant’s mercury.

In the past year Georgia has worked to draft a state level mercury rule aimed at cleaning up our state’s coal-fired power plants. Unfortunately one of their original proposals- a 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2012, has been significantly weakened by the utility lobby.

The current rule will require the installation of pollution controls over the next nine years but it gives no guarantee that reductions close to the 90 percent needed will occur and allows polluters to trade credits inside and outside of the state.  This trading may cause concentrations of mercury pollution that further threatens public health. To learn more about the current state mercury rule read our recent testimony to the Department of Natural Resources.