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Muir failed to add logic to power debate

By: Max Muller
Environment Illinois

Sunday, May 7, 2006 12:15 AM CDT

It's hard to know where to begin refuting Jim Muir's April 25 editorial against the proposed Illinois power plant mercury rule. We could start with his utterly ridiculous statement "a power plant in China poses more of a threat to you than a power plant located in the center of Southern Illinois," or that he's too busy bashing environmentalists in the first 10 paragraphs to provide a single argument against the rule. Mr. Muir accuses environmentalists of crying, "the sky is falling!" but he is wrong on that count, too. It's not that the sky is falling, but that local power plant mercury emissions are falling out of it.

But instead I'll start by doing what Mr. Muir claimed, but failed, to do: add a dash of logic to the debate. Muir's reasoning against the mercury rule mostly boils down to the single red herring that any reduction in in-state mercury emissions won't make a difference as they're just a drop in the bucket of mercury emitted globally. That's like saying Illinois firefighters should put down their hoses because most fires happen in other parts of the world. We fight Illinois fires because they're the ones that burn Illinoisans. And because two of the three major forms of mercury spewed from power plants tend to fall near the plant, we can keep Illinoisans from being poisoned by requiring in-state plants, the source of 71 percent of Illinois's mercury emissions, to capture that mercury before it leaves the smokestack.

When mercury lands in our waterways, bacteria convert it to methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin. Methylmercury accumulates in animals, the concentration increasing as it works its way up the food chain - in predator fish that anglers catch, the concentration can be 10 million times higher than the concentration in the ambient water - until it ends up on Illinoisans dinner plates. When a pregnant mother eats contaminated fish, methylmercury crosses the placenta and can cause irreparable damage to the developing fetus's central nervous system. An estimated one in six potential mothers in the United States has high enough blood-mercury levels to put a fetus at risk.

Humans get most of their mercury from eating fish - and mercury contaminates fish in every body of water in Illinois. The Southern readers should be particularly concerned since a recent Illinois Public Interest Research Group report found some of the state's highest fish tissue mercury concentrations in popular fishing lakes in Jackson and Williamson Counties: Cedar Lake, Kinkaid Lake, and Devil's Kitchen Lake all ranked among the top 10 in average fish mercury concentrations of 145 lakes tested, and Little Grassy Lake ranked 16th.

Fortunately, numerous studies have shown that decreasing mercury emissions leads to substantial decreases in fish mercury concentrations. In the Everglades, emission rates have decreased by 90 percent since peak levels 15 years ago, and over that same time period mercury concentrations in largemouth bass dropped by 80 percent - nearly a one-to-one correlation.

Since the mercury rule's announcement, plant owners have loved to remind us about the global mercury problem because they can point their fingers at it while they avoid taking responsibility for the pollution they dump on their neighbors. Other than repeating this diversion, Muir's only other argument against the mercury rule is that it will hurt Southern Illinois's coal industry. But in fact the mercury rule will likely boost coal mining jobs. Currently, most Illinois coal-fired power plants burn Western states' coal. A mercury emissions cap would increase demand for Illinois coal because it contains less mercury overall and more chlorine, which increases pollution control systems' mercury capture rate.

By getting these facts wrong, Mr. Muir played into the hands of power plant owners and did a disservice to Southern Illinoisans. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is pursuing the mercury rule because it's a sensible solution for the entire state - an economical and easy way to nearly eliminate emissions of a dangerous toxin into our environment.

MAX MULLER is an environmental advocate for Environment Illinois.