EPA to decide whether to reduce power-plant emissions of mercury

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Federal regulators are expected to announce next week whether they will move to rein in the mercury pumped into the air by coal-burning power-plants.

North Carolina is ground-zero for this poison that's pumped into the air by coal-burning power plants and falls to the earth as rain. Advisories against eating fish are now posted on 61 waterways in North Carolina and South Carolina contaminated by mercury.

Mercury is one of the most toxic substances in nature. A fraction of a teaspoon is enough to contaminate a 20-acre lake. It can cause pregnant women to deliver babies that are brain damaged, mentally retarded or blind if they eat fish in which mercury accumulates.

North Carolina - along with South Carolina, Georgia and Florida - catch some of the nation's highest deposits of mercury in rainfall. A North Carolina study detected mercury in frequent fish-eaters at up to 33 times normal levels - the highest ever recorded in the United States.

Because mercury is a naturally occurring element, it never goes away. It can be dispersed in the environment, such as when a power plant burns coal that contains mercury. Coal-fired power plants are the country's largest source of manmade mercury emissions.

"On balance, mercury from coal-fired utilities is the hazardous pollutant of greatest potential public health concern," an Environmental Protection Agency report says.

The Environmental Protection Agency is to decide by Friday whether to force utilities to limit mercury emissions. If the agency goes forward, it would decide later how deep to make the cuts.

Progress Energy, formerly Carolina Power & Light, releases 2,300 pounds of mercury a year from its coal-fired power plants in Person and New Hanover counties. Stripping all mercury emissions could cost up to $70,000 a pound, spokesman Mike Hughes said.

Duke Power's plants release about 1,400 pounds of mercury a year, said spokesman Joe Maher. Its mercury-producing operations are in Stokes, Catawba, Gaston and Cleveland counties.

The two power companies were responsible for seven of the top 10 mercury sources in North Carolina from 1996 to 1998, according to the state Division of Air Quality. Those emission results may have changed since those statistics were collected, the division said.

The Electric Power Research Institute, the industry's research arm, said the impact of utility emissions is unclear.

"We don't know whether fish are taking up new mercury or mercury that's already in the water," said EPRI's Leonard Levin. In European countries where emissions were curtailed, he said, fish continued to show high levels for years.

Some forms of mercury travel thousands of miles in the atmosphere, while others fall near their source. Scientists can't tell whether contamination stems from local or global mercury. But some evidence hints at the role local emissions may play.