Administration Changes Mercury Rules

The new chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is introducing rules for reducing mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. But environmentalists and others say the rules actually rollback provisions in the Clean Air Act. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

The new chief of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is introducing rules for reducing
mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. But environmentalists and others say the
rules actually rollback provisions in the Clean Air Act. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Julie Grant reports:


Mercury is toxic. It can cause brain damage, especially in young children and fetuses. Forty-
percent of the mercury in air pollution comes from power plants, but it’s never been regulated as
a pollutant. The EPA had planned reductions of 90-percent by 2007. But now, the Bush
administration plans reductions of only 70-percent by 2018.


EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt praises the plan as good for the environment and the economy.
Environmentalists and others say it’s a complete deception. To implement the new program, they
say the administration has downgraded mercury from the “hazardous pollutant” category. Leavitt
denies that:


“We are not changing the status of mercury at all. It is a dangerous toxin and our objective is to
reduce it in the most aggressive way we possibly can.”


The new rules regulating mercury go into effect next December. For the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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