Floor Statement on S. Con. Res. 28
May 22, 1997
Mr. President, I would like to draw the Senate's attention to something that
is going on at the Environmental Protection Agency that is of great concern to
many of our House and Senate colleagues, and to myself. For the past year, I
have been working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House
and now, the Science Advisory Board, to release a 1,700-page report on the
sources, health risks, and control measure for mercury pollution in our
country. This report is the best and most complete assemblage of state-of-the-art
information to date on the sources and health effects of mercury pollution.
It has undergone extensive internal and external peer review. American
taxpayers have already paid more than $1 million in contract dollars and for
more than 25,000 hours of staff time to develop this report. Had the report
been submitted to the Congress when it was effectively completed roughly 17
months ago, the information it contains would have been available to the
public and for use by State and Federal decision-makers.
Because of the widespread public and congressional concern over the health and
environmental effects of mercury pollution, the 1990 Clean Air amendments
required the EPA to conduct a study of mercury and submit that study to
Congress by November 1994. Instead, the EPA submitted the report to the
Science Advisory Board for review because new studies are expected to be
published over the next 2 years. Well, as we all know, one thing you can be
sure of in this world is that researchers will continue to research; there
will always be new studies, and this is as it should be. We need sound science
to make public policy decisions. But we also need up-to-date science, and that
is what this report offers. As time passes, the information contained in the
report becomes increasingly less useful for regulatory and judicial decisions.
Mercury poses a serious and growing public health and environmental threat to
our Nation. Thirty-seven States have issued human health consumption advisories
because of unacceptable levels of mercury in freshwater fish. According to EPA
estimates, as many as 85,000 pregnant women are exposed to mercury levels high
enough to produce risks to their children. Yet many States cannot identify the
sources and quantities of this pollutant or address the problems that arise
both within and outside State borders.
We Vermonters are deeply concerned about what is being transported by air
currents across our borders. Acid rain taught us that our tough laws on the
environment were not enough to protect us. We could be affected from other
areas of the country whose environmental standards may not be as high as our
own. Yet despite these standards, Vermont and other States have become a
dumping ground. We saw some of our healthiest forests die off from pollution
that came from outside our region. Unlike the many compounds causing acid rain,
mercury does not break down. It circulates through the environment. It is not
going to go away when we turn off the tap. It will settle in the lakes,
streams, and soils of those States that were also the dumping ground for acid
rain.
The public has a right to this report and the States need it to make sensible
decisions about reducing mercury in the environment. Instead, it has been
sitting on the shelf for nearly 2 years now. By holding back the mercury
report, the administration is denying to Federal and State regulatory bodies
and to the public information that will be critical to the revision of health
advisories, air pollution measures, and utility restructuring proposals. But
releasing the report is only the first step in addressing mercury pollution.
The concurrent resolution I am submitting today also addresses the need to
reduce mercury releases into the environment.
One major source of mercury is municipal waste due to the disposal of
mercury-containing lamps. EPA has proposed a rule to either exempt
mercury-containing lamps from hazardous waste regulations or to include them
in the universal waste rule, but EPA has made little progress since 1995.
Exempting mercury-containing lamps from the hazardous waste rule would allow
more than 500 million lamps to be deposited in solid waste landfills or
conveyed to waste incinerators, perpetuating the uncontrolled release of
mercury into the environment. In Vermont, we are building a recycling industry
to collect mercury-containing lamps. We are trying to keep mercury out of our
waste stream. Without a Federal effort to encourage the same preventive steps
in other States, this effort will be for naught. By including
mercury-containing lamps in the universal waste rule, we would encourage
recycling and the elimination of these products from the municipal solid
waste stream.
Another integral step in addressing mercury pollution is development of a
better inventory of mercury emissions. One of the recommendations of the
mercury report is to acquire test data on notable sources of mercury. My
concurrent resolution calls upon EPA to begin landfill testing in pilot sites
across the country. Several States have already expressed an interest in
testing, and Florida has already begun testing at landfills. The only testing
conducted at the Federal level was in New York City where two studies raised
contradictory findings. In a 1994 Minnesota study, more than 10 percent of the
overall emissions of mercury were attributed to landfills. We need to verify
these initial findings through a national pilot program. Unfortunately, the
1,700-page mercury report does not include an examination of landfills.
It is my hope that by releasing the mercury report, promulgating regulations
on disposal of mercury-containing lamps and testing for mercury emissions, we
will lay the groundwork for the long-overdue reduction of mercury from several
sources. I am pleased to be joined by my colleagues, Senators Wellstone,
Jeffords, Levin, Moynihan, Feingold, and Dodd, in submitted this Senate
concurrent resolution. I hope that this resolution will draw to this issue the
attention not only of the Senate, but also of the administration.
As printed in the Congressional Record.
