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EPA Web Page - Controlling Mercury Emissions from Power Plants.
STAPPA/ALAPCO's - State Programs to Control Mercury Emissions.
Full Text of Article by Bruce Henderson of the Charolotte Observer
Mercury Public Hearing in Charlotte
Posted by the Charlotte Observer on Friday, May. 26, 2006:
Residents voice mercury concernsPeople worried about consuming polluted fish
BRUCE HENDERSON
bhenderson@charlotteobserver.com
A parade of young mothers, doctors and environmentalists on Thursday urged the state's top environmental board to sharply rein in power plant emissions of mercury, a toxic metal that can impair babies.
Utilities say they're lowering emissions but can't promise the 90 percent reductions environmental groups demand.
The hearing, part of a series around the state, brought to Charlotte a debate once centered on the coastal plain, where mercury-contaminated fish are most commonly found. Mercury from industrial smokestacks falls to earth, often accumulating in fish.
Duke Energy owns five coal-fired power plants in the region. Fish-consumption advisories, revised in March, now include largemouth bass caught anywhere in the state.
The Environmental Management Commission has proposed limits that, like a federal standard to take effect this fall, would reduce mercury releases 70 percent by 2018.
Most of the two dozen speakers Thursday told the commission that's too little, too late.
"I can choose what I eat," said Laureen Marston-Hindi, her baby cradled to her chest, "but I cannot choose the air I breathe."
Mercury most often affects people who eat contaminated fish. Pregnant women, in particular, risk causing learning and developmental problems in their babies. At least 10 percent of women of child-bearing age have potentially unsafe mercury levels, the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated.
Fit, trim and mostly vegetarian, Julie Knutson wore her biking shorts under her skirt to the hearing. But the canned albacore tuna she began eating five years ago for protein came with a price -- slightly elevated mercury levels, tests revealed earlier this year.
"I don't eat tuna anymore," she said.
North Carolina expects mercury releases to drop about 60 percent by 2013 as a state law reducing power plant emissions takes effect.
Tests at two Duke plants found that injecting carbon into smokestack gases could remove up to 90 percent of the mercury. But results varied widely, Duke said, and couldn't be consistently repeated.
New Duke plants, such as the two units planned for Rutherford County, will use state-of-the-art controls that will capture more than 80 percent of their mercury.
Duke favors a provision in the proposed rule that allows trading of emission "credits," giving the company flexibility as it decides where to build new plants and retire old ones.
But trading, environmentalists say, would mean no controls on some plants, leaving mercury "hot spots."
While mercury is carried around the globe by winds, preliminary EPA research says Charlotte is among four U.S. cities where it falls close to the smokestacks that release it. The EPA could not elaborate on that research Thursday.