ALBANY (AP) -- Environmental groups are praising new federal standards proposed to limit mercury and other coal-fired power plant air pollutants, saying the rules are a major step toward reversing damage to New York's lakes and helping loons and other wildlife, particularly in the Adirondacks.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed the emissions standards Wednesday.
That action was in response to a deadline set in a U.S. Court of Appeals decision in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of national health and environmental groups, including the Adirondack Mountain Club. The 2008 decision threw out EPA's Clean Air Mercury Rule, which allowed polluters to buy pollution credits and emit mercury. That resulted in regional mercury "hot spots," including in the Adirondack and Catskill mountains.
Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, said technology required by the new standard will cut mercury emissions from power plant smokestacks by 91 percent and also reduce fine particulate matter, low-level ozone and acid rain.
Studies have found that 96 percent of Adirondack lakes and 40 percent of lakes in New Hampshire and Vermont exceed the EPA's maximum recommended mercury level in fish. Studies by the Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham, Maine, have found elevated mercury levels not only in loons and other fish-eating birds, but also in forest songbirds, including the Bicknell's thrush that lives on mountain tops.
Research has linked elevated mercury in fish to reproductive problems. In birds, mercury has been associated with decreased chick survival, spinal cord degeneration, hormone disruption and difficulty flying, walking and standing. In humans, children born to women who eat mercury-contaminated fish are at risk for neurological problems.
Studies by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation in Hanover, N.H., in 2007 estimated that 40 to 65 percent of mercury deposition in the Northeast was caused by coal-fired power plants. The authors found that remote areas such as the Adirondacks, with ecosystems damaged by decades of acid rain pollution, were so sensitive that even a moderate amount of airborne mercury pollution could produce extremely high mercury levels in fish and wildlife.
The Hubbard Brook studies also found that mercury levels in fish and wildlife can decline quickly in response to decreased airborne mercury emissions.
Medical groups have hailed the EPA mercury rules, saying they'll remove air pollutants that contribute to respiratory illness, birth defects and developmental problems for children. Industry groups, however, have said the EPA is inflating the potential benefits of standards that would cost billions of dollars to meet.
The court order gave the EPA until November to make the rules official. Companies would then have three years to comply.
(Copyright ©2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
