Floor Statement on the
Omnibus Mercury Emissions Reduction Act of 1999 (S 673)

March 19, 1999

As United States Senators, we all have a responsibility as stewards for the nation and society we will be entrusting to our children and grandchildren. I became a grandfather for the first time a little over a year ago, and this duty has never been more real for me. The "Omnibus Mercury Emissions Reduction Act of 1999" is a comprehensive plan to eliminate mercury -- one of the last remaining poisons without a specific control strategy -- from our air, our waters and our forests. By eliminating mercury pollution from our natural resources, we will protect our nation's most important resource: the young Americans of today and tomorrow.

As we learned from the campaign to eliminate lead, our children are at the greatest risk from these poisons. How many future scientists, doctors, poets, and inspiring teachers have we lost in the last generation because of the toxics they have been exposed to in the womb or in early childhood? Just as with lead, we know that mercury has much graver effects on children at very low levels than it does on adults. The level of lead pollution we and our children breathe today is one-tenth what it was a decade ago. That figure by itself is a tribute to the success of the original Clean Air Act. We should strive to achieve no less with mercury.

Mercury is toxic in every known form and has utterly no nutritional value. At high enough levels it poisons its victims in terribly tragic ways. In Japan, victims of mercury poisoning came to be known as suffering from Minimata Disease, which took its name from the small Minimata Bay in which they caught fish for their food.

For years, the Chisso Company, a chlor-alkali facility that manufactured chlorine, discharged mercury contaminated pollution in the bay, which was consumed by fish and then by people. Their disease was terribly painful, causing tremors and paralysis, and sometimes leading to death. Thankfully, wholesale discharges of mercury like those in Minimata Bay have been eliminated. But a torrent of air pollution still needlessly dumps this heavy metal into the air of North America, poisoning lakes and streams, forests and fields and -- most importantly -- our children. Mercury control needs to be a priority now because of the neurological damage it causes.

This is not to say that men, women and children are doubled over in agony as they were three decades ago in Japan. Mercury pollution today is more subtle, but it is no less insidious. Wildlife are also being harmed. Endangered Florida panthers have been fatally poisoned by mercury . Loons are endangered as well. In Lake Champlain we have fish advisories for walleye, trout and bass even though we have relatively few mercury emissions within our own state borders. There are now 40 states that have issued fishing advisories for mercury; Vermont's and those of 10 other states cover all of the water bodies in these states. Nearly 1,800 water bodies nationwide have mercury fishing advisories posted. The number of water bodies with mercury advisories has doubled since 1993.

My fellow Vermonters are exposed to mercury and other pollutants that blow across Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains every day from other regions of the country. The waste incinerators and coal-fired power plants are not accountable to the people of Vermont, and therefore a federal role is needed to control the pollution.

That is part of the reason voters send us here. They expect Members of the Congress to determine what is necessary to protect the public health and the environment nationally, then to take the appropriate action. And in many cases, perhaps most, we have done that. But not when it comes to mercury.

Mr. President, what I propose is that we put a stop to this poisoning of America. It is unnecessary, and it is wrong. Mercury can be removed from manufactured products, and much of that has been done. Mercury can be removed from coal-fired powerplants, and now that should be done. With states deregulating their utility industries, this is the right moment and the best opportunity we will have for a generation to make sure powerplants begin to internalize the costs of their pollution. We cannot afford to give them a free ride into the next century at the expense of our children's health.

So, too, should mercury be purged from other known sources such as chlor-alkali plants, medical waste incinerators, municipal combustion facilities, large industrial boilers, landfills, and lighting fixtures.

My bill directs EPA to set mercury emission standards for the largest sources of mercury emissions. The bill requires reducing emissions by 95 percent, but it also lets companies choose the best approach to meet the standard at their facility whether through the use of better technology, cleaner fuels, process changes, or product switching.

The bill also gives people the right-to-know about mercury emissions from the largest sources. That should be the public's right. To facilitate the public's right-to-know and getting mercury containing items out of the waste streams that feed municipal combustion facilities, it also requires labeling of mercury containing items such as fluorescent light bulbs, batteries, pharmaceuticals. The bill also begins a phaseout of mercury from products, with exceptions possible for demonstrated essential uses.

We will hear a lot of rhetoric about how much implementing mercury reduction steps will cost. In advance of those complaints I want to make two points. First, when we were debating controls for acid rain we heard a lot about the enormous cost of eliminating sulphur dioxide. But what we learned from the acid rain program is that when you give industry a financial incentive to clean up its act, they will find the cheapest way. More often than not, assertions about the cost of controlling pollution grossly overestimate and distort reality. If you look at electricity prices of major utilities since the acid rain program was implemented, their rates have remained below the national average and some have actually decreased -- even without adjusting for inflation. The mercury controls on coal-fired power plants contained in my bill may add a little over $2 dollars per month to the electric bill of the average residential consumer who receives power from a coal-fired plant. So, for the monthly cost of a slice of pizza or a hamburger and fries we can rein in the more than 50 tons of mercury that are being pumped into our air from power plants.

Secondly, and most importantly, the bottom line here should not be the cost of controlling mercury emissions , but the cost of not controlling mercury. While we may not be able to calculate how many Einstein's we have lost, if we lose one the price has been too high.

Let us make controlling mercury pollution one of our first environmental legacies of the 21st Century.

As printed in the Congressional Record.