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Press Release

For Immediate Release:                     Contact:

Wednesday, December 21, 2011              Paul Ertelt, (518) 449-3870
                                                           

EPA Gets It Right on Mercury

ALBANY, N.Y. –  The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) today applauded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for issuing the first-ever national standards for emissions of mercury and other toxic air pollutants from coal-fired power plants.

Under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), power plants will be required to install state-of-the-art pollution control technologies to cut harmful emissions of mercury, arsenic, cyanide and gases that cause acid rain and smog. The standards will impact about 40 percent of the nation’s coal-fired power plants. The average age of these plants is 50 years old. The technology needed to remove these toxins is already available and installed on the remaining 60 percent of coal-burning power plants.

“These new mercury rules are long overdue, but this time EPA got it right. Every power plant in the nation will have to clean up by 2016 or shut down,” said ADK Executive Director Neil Woodworth. “These tough standards for coal-fired power plants will go a long way in reversing mercury contamination in New York’s lakes, particularly in the Adirondacks. I am proud that ADK played a direct role in bringing about this historic environmental breakthrough.”

ADK was part of a coalition of health and environmental organizations that went to court to challenge EPA’s Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR), a cap-and-trade program that would have allowed polluters to buy pollution credits and emit mercury without pollution controls. CAMR would have resulted in regional mercury “hot spots,” and recent studies have linked coal-fired power plants to mercury hot spots in the Adirondacks and Catskills.

In 2008, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that CAMR conflicted with the federal Clean Air Act, which requires each power plant to install the best pollution-control technology available to reduce mercury emissions. ADK, which filed a brief with the appeals court in January 2007, was the only New York environmental group to participate in the lawsuit.

A 2007 independent study by Charles Driscoll and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation estimated that mercury emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants are responsible for 40 percent to 65 percent of mercury deposition in the Northeast.

Current levels of mercury deposition in the Northeast are four to six times higher than the levels recorded in 1900. Ninety-six percent of the lakes in the Adirondack region and 40 percent of the lakes in New Hampshire and Vermont exceed the recommended EPA action level for methyl mercury in fish.

Because of high mercury levels in fish from a number of reservoirs in the Catskills, state health officials have warned that infants, children under 15 and women of childbearing age should not eat any fish from these reservoirs. Mercury is also present in two-thirds of Adirondack loons at levels that negatively impact their reproductive capacity, posing a significant risk to their survival.

More information about MATS is available at www.epa.gov/mats/.

Listen to WAMC's report on the new mercury standards here.

The Adirondack Mountain Club, founded in 1922, is the oldest and largest organization dedicated to the protection of the New York State Forest Preserve. ADK is a nonprofit, membership organization that protects the Forest Preserve, state parks and other wild lands and waters through conservation and advocacy, environmental education and responsible recreation. For more information about ADK, visit our website at www.adk.org.