Public health, environmental,
and river protection groups are urging Georgians to speak out against proposed
mercury pollution rules that are significantly weaker than those originally
proposed by the Georgia Environmental Protection Division (EPD). EPD’s proposal in February of 2006 called for
an 80-85 percent mercury pollution reduction by 2010 and a 90 percent reduction
by 2015. The current proposal fails to put any firm cap on pollution. It relies on technology upgrades, some of which
won’t be required until 2018.
Advocates have identified
other major flaws with the rules, including 1) the need for more extensive
mercury monitoring in fish, 2) a provision that allows trading of mercury
pollution credits in and out of the state, and 3) the exclusion of several
coal-fired plants from the technology requirements. The rules will be available
for public comment until May 29th, and will face a vote at the DNR
board on June 27th.
Like lead, mercury is a
neurotoxin, but ten times more potent. Very small levels of mercury can affect
the way children learn, think, memorize and behave. Coal-fired power plants are
responsible for 76 percent of Georgia’s
mercury pollution. This mercury is deposited in swamps, creeks, rivers, and
lakes, where it builds up in the fish that we eat. Currently every stream and
lake in Georgia that has
been sampled has mercury fish advisories, and fish caught in Georgia have been found to have
twice the average mercury concentration considered safe for women of childbearing
age who eat fish twice a week.
“Georgia is poised to pass seriously
flawed mercury pollution rules,” said Jennette Gayer, a Policy Advocate with
Environment Georgia. “Technology requirements will help cut mercury but these
rules don’t contain enforceable limits on mercury pollution that will allow the
public to hold polluters accountable.
That’s like putting limits on NASCAR engine sizes and then saying ‘go as
fast as you want to’. This is not a
racetrack-- it’s our fish, and our health.”
Blackwater rivers such as the
Ogeechee, Satilla, Alapaha, and Ochlockonee
are especially prone to mercury contamination, affecting bass, redbreast,
catfish and many other fish that Georgians eat on a regular basis. The Okefenokee, crown jewel of South Georgia’s swamps, is heavily contaminated. Many bodies of water have never been sampled,
and the sampling plan that EPD has published to support the new rule shows huge
gaps in coverage.
Additionally, some emissions
are slated to be not controlled at all. “The rules exempt certain power plants
from mercury pollution controls.
Unfortunately, those plants are in South Georgia
just where the effects of their untreated mercury emissions are the worst.
That’s just bad public policy,” said Frank Carl, Savannah Riverkeeper. “You
don’t run the exhaust pipe into your living room”.
“After the 2006 general
election we have the constitutional right to hunt and fish”, said Satilla
Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers, “yet we have to be careful about how many of the
fish we eat and feed our kids. Something about that sounds just like
fingernails dragging across a chalk board.”
The plan allows polluters to
trade mercury pollution “credits” which will create more ‘hot spots:’ areas
where mercury deposition is higher than in surrounding areas. Studies have
linked these hot spots to point sources of mercury such as coal-fired power
plants.
“Trading of mercury pollution
credits out of the state means that some of the oldest and dirtiest power
plants in states that border Georgia
will be able to continue to pollute and possibly increase their pollution. To
begin with, this practice is not very neighborly, but worse, it means that we
might end up with the pollution anyway,” said Patty Durand, State Director of
the Sierra Club of Georgia “The mercury
is carried on air currents which blow back across Georgia and deposited into
some of the smaller tributaries of our border rivers.”
The advocates urged Georgians
concerned about mercury pollution to weigh in with the Georgia EPD. “This is an issue that affects each and every
Georgian,” said Chandra Brown, Ogeechee-Canoochee Riverkeeper. “Mercury affects the health and well-being of
our most vulnerable resource, our children. I hope that people will take the
time to ask EPD for guaranteed mercury reductions, pollution controls for all
plants and a prohibition on mercury trading.”
“Reducing mercury pollution will improve
public health and also help sustain our billion-dollar-a-year nature-based
economy here in coastal Georgia,”
said David Kyler with the Center for a Sustainable Coast.
To comment send letters to: EPDcomments@dnr.state.ga.us
