News Coverage
North Carolina called a mercury 'hot spot'
Published December 13, 2003
North Carolina ranks high on the country's list of mercury "hot spots," and much of the pollution originates within the state, according to a report released this week.
The report, by the national nonprofit group Environmental Defense, pushes for strict mercury emissions limits for the country's coal-fired power plants, including the 14 operating in North Carolina. While some other industries have been forced to cut mercury emissions by 90 percent, utilities have escaped mercury regulation, even though they produce about 40 percent of the nation's mercury pollution.
Stricter limits would protect children from the damaging effects of eating mercury-laden fish, the report says. While mercury emissions from power plants could be cut by half as North Carolina's utilities comply with the 2002 Clean Smokestacks Act, that is still not enough, said Michael Shore, senior policy analyst for Environmental Defense.
On Monday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will announce its plans to cut mercury emissions at power plants. The agency will decide between two options: a cap-and-trade system that will force utilities to reduce emissions by 70 percent by 2018 or a system that will ask utilities to implement the maximum control possible at each plant. The EPA favors the cap-and-trade option, said spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.
The EPA is considering adding tuna, second only to shrimp as America's favorite seafood, to a list of consumption advisories for mercury. The proposed warning would advise that young children or women of child-bearing age should eat no more than 12 ouces of seafood, including tuna, each week.
Health officials, regulators and the tuna industry are haggling over what the advisory should say. The FDA hopes to issue revised consumer recommendations in the spring.
Environmentalists and some public health officials say the EPA's mercury reduction plan will take too long to implement, while technologies already exist to cut mercury emissions by up to 90 percent.
Lynn Goldman is a pediatrician and former head of the EPA's toxics program for the Clinton administration. She spoke about the issue on Tuesday during a conference call on the report, which is titled "Out of Control and Close to Home." Goldman said the EPA's cap-and-trade proposal will expose another generation of children to toxic mercury before significant emissions cuts take effect.
U.S. power plants emit 48 tons of mercury into the air each year. The EPA wants to cut those emissions by 30 percent, to 34 tons, in the next seven years and by 70 percent by 2018.
Along with the 34-ton cap, the EPA is proposing to allow companies to trade mercury credits. That means if a company upgrades its equipment and cuts mercury emissions by more than the required amounts, it could sell those "credits" to others slower in cutting emissions.
Shore argues that the technology exists to cut total emissions to 5 tons a year, a level that would be much healthier for people and the environment.
The EPA's proposal "puts profits of the utilities ahead of children's health," Shore said.
Bergman said the cap-and- trade system is a better option because not every company is capable of immediately installing the latest pollution-control system. That would mean the EPA would have to set the standard too low to accommodate them.
"That lowers the bar to the lowest common denominator," Bergman said.
Mercury advisories
Forty-three states, including North Carolina, have fish advisories to protect people, especially children and women of child-bearing age, from eating mercury-tainted fish.
In North Carolina, the state warns that children as well as women who could become pregnant should not eat largemouth bass, bowfin or chain pickerel caught in waters east of Interstate 85 or shark, tile fish, swordfish or king mackerel caught anywhere.
Mercury from industry and the burning of fossil fuels escapes into the air and falls onto soil and into water. The trouble begins in the water, where microbes turn relatively harmless elemental mercury into toxic methylmercury. The methylmercury accumulates in fish tissues up through the food chain. Some species of predator fish, such as largemouth bass, can contain enough of the toxin to cause brain damage and developmental problems in unborn babies and children. The primary form of exposure is through eating tainted fish.
North Carolina is listed as No. 7 on a list of the top 10 mercury "hot spots" in the country in the Environmental Defense report. The list was compiled using an analysis of EPA air-flow modeling data on mercury deposition done earlier this year. The states were ranked according to the most severe "hot spot" in each state. Indiana tops the list, followed by Michigan, Maryland, Florida, Illinois, South Carolina, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas and Tennessee.
North Carolina's hot spot was determined to be just south of Charlotte, downwind from a large Duke Power coal plant, Shore said. But the state's troubles with mercury are centered in the Coastal Plain, where black-water, swampy river systems provide an ideal environment for the microbes that transform mercury into its toxic form.
The report cites statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that have shown that about 8 percent of American women of child-bearing age have mercury levels in their blood that exceed federal safety standards and could harm their babies if they were to become pregnant. The CDC estimates that more than 300,000 newborns are at risk of neurological problems each year.
Goldman said the damage may be subtle. The damage may not be extensive, but it can prevent those children from reaching their full intellectual potential, she added.
Home-grown problem
Most of the mercury problems, between 50 percent and 80 percent, in the states identified as hot spots in the report come from sources within each state's borders. Legislation passed by the General Assembly last year will inadvertently reduce mercury from North Carolina's coal plants.
Utility companies in the state are taking steps to comply with the 2002 N.C. Clean Smokestacks Act, which requires power plants to reduce their emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. As a secondary benefit, mercury emissions from the state's 14 coal plants are expected to drop by about half by 2012. That is not enough, Shore and others say.
In North Carolina, the state's 14 coal-fired power plants account for about 65 percent of the state's mercury emissions, according to the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Julie Hans, a spokeswoman for Progress Energy, said that company already has begun installing new pollution-prevention equipment at its Asheville plant. Plans have been made for improvements to the company's six other coal plants by the 2012 deadline. Installing the equipment at all the plants will cost the company about $813 million, Hans said.
Duke Power operates the other seven coal-burning plants in North Carolina. Its bill for meeting Clean Smokestacks Act requirements will be $1.5 billion. Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Power, said the company will begin installing pollution equipment at its Marshall Steam Station plant on the upper end of Lake Norman in January.
Duke Power has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to assist in long-term tests of mercury-control equipment.