| TRENTON
– Attorney General Zulima V. Farber
announced that New Jersey filed a new petition
today in federal court challenging final
rules published June 9 by the Environmental
Protection Agency which establish a cap-and-trade
system for regulating harmful mercury emissions
from power plants.
EPA
announced on May 31 that it would move forward
with its cap-and-trade program for mercury
emissions despite petitions from the states
and environmental groups that outlined how
the program will delay meaningful emission
reductions for many years, perpetuating
hot spots of mercury deposits and posing
a serious threat to the health of children.
New
Jersey filed suit for a 16-state coalition
last year in the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the D.C. Circuit, challenging the cap-and-trade
rule and a separate rule that removed power
plants from the list of pollution sources
subject to stringent pollution controls
under the federal Clean Air Act. The lawsuit,
which asserts that both rules violate the
Clean Air Act, was put on hold by the court
in October when the EPA agreed to a formal
reconsideration of the rules.
After
more than six months, EPA chose to adopt
final rules that failed to address any of
the concerns raised by the states. EPA actually
made the rules worse than those originally
adopted, weakening already weak mercury
emissions standards for every major category
of coal plant except for bituminous coal-burning
plants. The new petition filed by New Jersey
for the coalition of states will allow the
suit to move forward.
“New
Jersey has demonstrated in the past its
willingness to vigorously pursue litigation
to protect our citizens’ health and
meet clean air quality standards,”
said Governor Jon S. Corzine. “New
Jersey will continue to take action to ensure
that the Clean Air Act’s protections
are enforced even when the federal government
abdicates its own responsibility to do so.”
“After
six months of stalling, EPA not only failed
to address the grave dangers posed to communities
and children by its cap-and-trade program
for mercury emissions, it made the program
worse by further weakening standards,”
said Attorney General Farber. “We
are moving forward in court to fight these
rules, which do not meet the mandate of
the Clean Air Act.”
“Despite
everything that is known about the dangers
of mercury, the federal government continues
to respond with a blind eye and a deaf ear,”
said Department of Environmental Protection
Commissioner Lisa P. Jackson. “Indeed,
the lack of action at the federal level
threatens to undermine the tough regulatory
action New Jersey has taken to reduce in-state
mercury emissions and protect the health
of our residents.”
Coal-fired
power plants are the largest source of uncontrolled
mercury emissions, generating 48 tons of
mercury emissions per year nationwide. The
trading scheme established by EPA’s
cap-and-trade rule will allow power plants
to purchase emissions reduction credits
from other plants that reduce emissions
below targeted levels, rather than install
stringent controls to reduce mercury emissions
at their own plants. That will allow localized
deposits of mercury to continue unabated
near plants that choose not to reduce emissions,
perpetuating hot spots and hot regions that
can significantly impact the health of individual
communities.
Through
mercury deposition, mercury enters the aquatic
food chain and ultimately is consumed by
humans ingesting certain types of fish.
Children can suffer permanent brain and
nervous system damage as a result of exposure
to even low levels of mercury, which frequently
occurs in utero. Mercury exposure can result
in attention and language deficits, impaired
memory, and impaired visual and motor functions.
EPA
finalized its cap-and-trade rule despite
recent reports that further call into question
the conclusions underlying the rule. EPA-funded
research conducted in Steubenville, Ohio
found that mercury deposition rates from
local coal-fired plants are many times higher
than EPA projections, underscoring the potential
for uncontrolled plants to perpetuate mercury
hot-spots. EPA’s own Inspector General
released a report on May 15 which questioned
EPA’s conclusion that its new rules
will not result in mercury hotspots.
The
case is being handled for New Jersey by
Deputy Attorneys General Christopher Ball
and Jung Kim. The coalition challenging
the EPA rule also includes California, Connecticut,
Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New
Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Vermont and Wisconsin.
A
strict standard involving “maximum
achievable control technology” (MACT),
as required by the Clean Air Act, would
reduce mercury emissions to levels approximately
three times lower than the cap established
in the cap-and-trade rule EPA adopted, and
would do so far more quickly. EPA’s
cap-and-trade rule will yield little immediate
reductions in mercury emissions from power
plants from the current level of 48 tons
per year, and will delay even modest reductions
by more than a decade. If EPA had complied
with the Clean Air Act and required MACT
controls, it could have reduced emissions
at every coal-fired power plant by about
90 percent, to about 5 tons per year, with
a compliance deadline of 2008.
In
contrast to the EPA rule, New Jersey has
adopted tough new restrictions on mercury
emissions from coal-fired power plants,
iron and steel melters, and hospital and
medical waste and municipal solid waste
incinerators. The rules will reduce in-state
mercury emissions by over 1,500 pounds annually
and reduce emissions from New Jersey’s
coal-fired power plants by about 90 percent.
Exposure
to the most toxic form of mercury comes
primarily from eating contaminated fish
and shellfish. However, fish advisories,
which have been adopted by EPA, are not
an adequate substitute for appropriate regulation
of mercury emissions under the Clean Air
Act. Scientists estimate up to 600,000 children
may be born annually in the United States
with neurological problems leading to poor
school performance because of mercury exposure
while in the womb.
In
New Jersey, there are mercury consumption
advisories for at least one species of fish
in almost every body of water in the state.
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