MERCURY POLLUTION: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

April 22, 1998

Senate Floor

MR. PRESIDENT, I am blessed to come from and to represent a state whose people share a deep and abiding concern for the environment. Vermont is an example to the nation in its environmental ethics and in its environmental action.

We are especially proud that much of the environmental progress the nation has achieved in the last three decades is also part of the legacy of Vermont's own Robert Stafford, whose leadership in this body helped shape national environmental policy from the time that the environmental movement was in its infancy and continuing well into its maturity.

And in his role as Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works -- a post he assumed in 1981 -- Bob Stafford courageously and successfully stood up to the powerful interests who sought to roll back our environmental standards. Today, as we celebrate the 28th anniversary of Earth Day, I want to take a moment and reflect on the progress we have made to protect our environment, and to frankly discuss the job that remains to be done.

In the past few weeks, one of Vermont's treasures -- Lake Champlain -- has received a great deal of attention. This has also offered an opportunity to explain one of the threats to Lake Champlain from toxic pollutants drifting into our state. One of these pollutants -- mercury -- should be of particular concern. Like lakes and waterways in most states, Lake Champlain now has fish advisories for walleye, lake trout and bass due to mercury.

When I was growing up spending my summers on Lake Champlain, I never had to worry about eating the fish I caught. I only had to worry about catching them in the first place. When I take my grandson out fishing, I do not want to explain why he cannot eat the fish he catches. What I will tell my grandson is largely a function of what direction we decide to take in Congress to protect the environment. Are we going to rest on our laurels or are we going to build on the courageous steps that Bob Stafford took to protect our environment for future generations?

Although we should be proud of the great strides we have made to reduce the levels of many air and water pollutants, rebuild populations of endangered species and clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites, we must now address the environmental threats that continue to defy easy solutions.

One of these threats is the mercury that seeps into our air and water every day from coal-fired power plants, waste combustors and utility boilers. This extremely harmful heavy metal is one of the last remaining major toxins for which there is no control strategy. When the original Clean Air Act was written we did not understand the dangers posed by mercury exposure. Now we do.

Just last month, we had two frightening experiences with mercury in our schools in Vermont. Two of our high schools had to be closed for a week because small amounts of mercury were found in the classrooms. But these were incidents where you could actually see the mercury. The more elusive problem is identifying and limiting the mercury you cannot see as it moves through our air and is deposited into our waters. With the release of the Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury Study Report to Congress, we have the information to solve this problem. The question is, do we have the will?

The EPA report documents troubling levels of mercury emissions that are being deposited over much of the country. The report also estimates that in the United States there are more than 1.6 million pregnant women and their fetuses, women of childbearing age, and children who are at risk of brain and nerve development damage from mercury pollution.

Other new facts on mercury pollution are also troubling. As you can see from this chart, there were 27 states with fish advisories for mercury-contamination in 1993. In all, 899 lakes, river segments, and streams were identified as yielding mercury contaminated fish. By 1997, you can see that 39 states had issued mercury fish advisories, for 1,675 water bodies. That's an increase of 86 percent. This trend shows that we are going in the wrong direction to rid mercury from our waters. I do not want to wait until the entire map is filled in with red to act.

Year after year at least 150 tons of mercury are pumped into the atmosphere. It does not go away. It becomes more potent. We invest tremendous amounts of love, time, energy, and fiscal resources in our children, yet we are not protecting them from the possibility of being poisoned by a potent neurotoxin.

The critics of inaction are right. We can't tell to what degree kids with learning disorders, coordination problems, hearing, sight or speech problems have been harmed by mercury pollution. We can't tell you how many little Susies or Johnnys would have been gifted physicians, poets, or teachers, but who now have no chance of reaching their full potential because they were exposed to mercury in the womb or during early childhood.

Just as with lead, we know that mercury has much graver effects on children at very low levels then it does on adults. Mercury poisoning is insidious. Because we can't measure how much potential has been lost, some special interests will say that we should continue to do nothing.

Our late colleague, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, put it so well when he said, "[t]he first responsibility of Congress is not the making of technological or economic judgments. Our responsibility is to establish what the public interest requires to protect the health of persons." We have enough information to act. We don't have to wait until we have a body count. We just need the will to act.

To finally bring this poison under control, I recently introduced S. 1915, the "Omnibus Mercury Emissions Reduction Act of 1998." I have introduced this comprehensive piece of legislation to eliminate mercury from our air, our waters and our forests. If we eliminate mercury from our natural resources, we will protect our most important resource: our children and grandchildren. 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 products, and it has been done. Mercury can be removed from coal-fired powerplants, and it should be done.

We should limit the mercury that enters our environment from coal-fired power plants, waste incinerators and large industrial boilers, and other known sources. Americans have a right to know what is being spewed out of these facilities and into their backyards. Congress has a responsibility to give them the knowledge and tools to protect their children.

The residents of Colchester, Vermont, have been fighting for seven years to clean up a waste incinerator in their backyard that they were originally told was clean enough to toast marshmallows in. Well, now we know better and we need to require this and other facilities to eliminate mercury emissions.

One of the largest sources of mercury is coal-fired power plants. With states deregulating their utility industries, Congress today has a unique opportunity to make sure these powerplants begin to internalize the cost of their pollution.

Many of the problems the Clean Air Act of 1970 was drafted to solve are being addressed. But one thing has not worked out the way Congress originally envisioned. It seemed back then that old, dirty, inefficient power plants would eventually be retired and replaced by a new generation of clean and efficient plants. The concept worked with tailpipe controls on cars. Eventually the fleet turns over and the dirty ones are out of circulation.

But, twenty eight years later, many utilities continue to operate dirty, inefficient plants that were built in the 1950s or before. These plants are subject to much less stringent pollution controls than are new facilities, and what we now have is a big loophole, and these plants are pouring pollution through it.

If we don't level the pollution playing field now, in a deregulated industry the financial incentive will be to pump even more power and pollution out of these plants for as long as they will last. As long as the rules of the game allow this, these utility companies are acting in a manner that suits solely their economic self interest. As a nation, we cannot afford to subsidize their inefficiency, but our inaction does just that.

We will hear a lot of rhetoric about how much implementing this bill will cost. I want to address those complaints up front. The cost argument does not hold water. The EPA report estimates the cost nationally of controlling mercury from power plants at $5 billion per year, and this industry generates more than $200 billion a year in revenue. That is less that two and a half percent, and that strikes me as being the equivalent of a fly on an elephant's back.

Mercury pollution is a key piece of unfinished business in cleaning up our environment.

The poisoning of America's lakes, rivers, lands, and citizens with mercury pollution can be stopped. It is unnecessary, and continuing to ignore it mortgages the health of our children and grandchildren.