| TRENTON
– Attorney General Zulima V. Farber
announced today that New Jersey, as leader
of a 16-state coalition, is moving forward
with its court challenge to the new federal
Environmental Protection Agency rule that
establishes a cap-and-trade system for regulating
harmful mercury emissions from power plants.
EPA
announced Wednesday that it will not change
the rule despite petitions from the states
and environmental groups that outlined how
the rule will delay meaningful emission
reductions for many years, perpetuating
hot spots of local mercury deposition and
posing a serious threat to the health of
children.
New
Jersey filed suit on behalf of the coalition
on May 18, 2005 in the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the D.C. Circuit, asserting that the
rule violates the federal Clean Air Act.
However, the lawsuit was put on hold by
the court in October when the EPA agreed
to a formal reconsideration of the rule.
“EPA’s
reconsideration of its mercury cap-and-trade
program did nothing but delay by more than
six months our efforts to obtain judicial
relief from this inherently deficient and
dangerous new rule,” said Attorney
General Farber. “New Jersey is prepared
to move forward with its lawsuit challenging
the rule, which does not meet the mandate
of the Clean Air Act or the need to address
the grave threat that mercury poses to our
children.”
“New
Jersey has adopted tough rules to reduce
in-state mercury emissions, but we are faced
once again with a failure of leadership
at the federal level,” said Commissioner
Lisa P. Jackson of the Department of Environmental
Protection. “More than one-third of
the mercury deposited in New Jersey comes
from outside our state.”
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
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 deposition 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 wet mercury deposition rates
from local coal-fired industrial sources
are many times higher than EPA projections,
underscoring the potential for uncontrolled
local sources to perpetuate mercury hot-spots.
EPA’s Inspector General released a
report on May 15 which stated “several
uncertainties associated with key variables
in [EPA’s] analysis could affect the
accuracy of the Agency’s conclusion
that the Clean Air Mercury Rule will not
result in ‘utility-attributable’
hotspots.”
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 would 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.
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.
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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