Date sent: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 18:20:05 -0500 (EST)
Subject: PR NEW EPA RIGHT TO KNOW INIT. WILL PROVIDE
AMERICANS INFO.
!PR/RIGHT TO KNOW INIT. WILL PROVIDE AMERICANS INFOR. ON MERC./SCROLL
FOR RELEASE: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1998
NEW EPA RIGHT-TO-KNOW INITIATIVE WILL PROVIDE AMERICANS INFORMATION
ON MERCURY
As part of the Clinton Administration's public right-to-know
initiatives, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced
that it will require most coal-fired electric generating plants to
make publicly available for the first time ever information concerning
mercury emissions coming from their smokestacks. Coal-fired utilities
are the major source of mercury emissions in the United States.
"Community right-to-know efforts are a hallmark program of the Clinton
Administration, and one of the most effective tools to solve tough
environmental problems," said EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner.
"Putting information about toxic chemical pollution directly into the
hands of citizens helps them make informed decisions about how to best
protect the health of their families and work in their communities to
prevent the pollution in the first place."
Mercury is a heavy metal that, with high exposure, can cause
developmental problems in fetuses and delay walking and talking in
children, as well as lowering scores on nervous system function tests.
Mercury is of particular concern because it persists in the
environment. Mercury air emissions can end up in waterways through
rainfall and runoff and "bioaccumulate," or build up, in the food
chain. Mercury is the most frequent cause of fish consumption
warnings issued by states. Forty states to date have issued fish
consumption advisories in at least one body of water. Subsistence
fishers and women of child-bearing age particularly are advised to pay
careful attention to such warnings posted by states.
Last February, in a report to Congress evaluating toxic air emissions
from power plants, EPA concluded that utilities are the largest
source of mercury emissions into the air, with one third of all U.S.
man-made emissions coming from coal-fired plants (virtually no mercury
is emitted from any other type of power plant fuel). The report also
called for monitoring of power plants to better ascertain the quantity
and nature of mercury emissions. Today's action responds to that
need.
Under the information collection authority of Section 114 of the
Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, EPA will soon send letters to
utility companies requiring all coal-fired power plants above 25
megawatts generating capacity (approximately 1400 plants nationwide)
to sample and test for mercury content of the coal they burn and
report the results of the testing to the Agency. EPA will also
require a sample of 75 plants (randomly selected to include the major
types of coal and pollution controls, e.g. scrubbers) to perform
smokestack testing for the amount and type of mercury emissions. EPA
will then make the results of these tests available to the public.
EPA will begin collecting the emissions data Jan. 1, 1999, and
start making it available to the public on the Internet early in the
year 2000.
Congress has directed EPA to consider whether to regulate mercury
emissions, and the information collected will prove pivitol to that
assessment. EPA will use the data for several purposes. First, it
will allow EPA to compile the most accurate data ever assembled on
total mercury emissions from the electric power generating industry.
Second, the information on the type of mercury emitted will help the
Agency better determine the degree to which the pollution is a local
or a regional or global transport problem (the distance mercury
travels depends on the type emitted). Third, the data will aid EPA
and others in developing mercury emissions control technologies (the
two basic types of mercury emissions are elemental and oxidized).
Today's action is not a regulation and will not appear in the
Federal Register; however, supporting information is accessible
immediately at website: http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t3pfpr.html. For
further technical information, contact William Maxwell of EPA's Office
of Air Quality Planning and Standards at 919-541-5430 or e-mail him
at: [email protected].
R-156###
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