Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy
On S.J.Res. 20, A Resolution To Disapprove
The Administration's Mercury Rule
September 12, 2005

If we ever wondered what a mercury pollution rule would look like if it were written by the polluters, now we know.  This is pretty much it.  Given the trust that people have justifiably had in the Environmental Protection Agency since its creation during the Nixon Administration, it is sad, and it is appalling, to see how the agency has been captured by polluting special interests in decisions about limiting mercury pollution.

And it is regrettable that the American people and many of their representatives in Congress have been forced to the conclusion that the mercury rule has been so mishandled and so co-opted by special interests that this rare effort to override this rule has become necessary.  But it HAS become necessary.  And today the United States Senate will have a choice to make about the future of toxic mercury pollution --  

Do we follow the Bush Administration, and the well-funded special interests who are creating most of this mercury pollution, in taking several steps backward, forcing the American people to wait at least another decade before cleaning up the toxic mercury that is spewing out of old dirty power plants across the country? 

Do we allow this new rule to let toxic mercury -- a substance so harmful that it causes birth defects, IQ loss and mental retardation – continue to poison children and pregnant women, while costing taxpayers billions in healthcare costs?  Shouldn’t the proliferation of warnings that our states and the federal government have had to give to sportsmen and women and to the general public about the consumption of fish – fish caught in streams and lakes and rivers all across America -- be enough to shame our government into action?

Do we allow this rule to move forward when EPA’s own Inspector General has said it does not comply with EPA and Executive Order requirements?  And when the General Accountability Office has said there are “major shortcomings in the economic analysis?”

Or do we uphold the bipartisan work that produced the Clean Air Act, protect the health of pregnant women and children, and begin now to clean up the toxic mercury emissions  now? 

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to control each power plant's emissions of mercury and other toxics by 2008 at the latest.  The Act requires each plant to use the "maximum achievable control technology" on every generating unit.  That is the law of the land.  Anything less means more pollution.

But instead of working to enforce and implement the Clean Air Act, as two previous Administrations had, the Bush Administration has turned the Clean Air Act on its head.  With this rule the Administration revokes an earlier EPA finding that it is “necessary and appropriate” to require that each power plant apply technology to reduce mercury emissions. 

Let me repeat those plain, startling facts:  By revoking the earlier EPA finding and deciding instead to coddle the biggest mercury polluters, the Administration is saying it is no longer necessary or appropriate to adequately control mercury emissions.  Although I am somewhat impressed that they can make this statement with straight faces, I am appalled at their audacious disregard for the health of the American people, and, like the scientific community, I am baffled by their gymnastic arguments.

As this chart demonstrates, the plain and simple truth is that this rule will allow more mercury into our environment than does the current law.  Hundreds of the oldest, dirtiest power plants will not even control mercury emissions for more than a decade.  That is what this rule gives us: More pollution, for longer than the Clean Air Act allows.

This rule is all the more shameful because the evidence of public health and environmental damage from mercury and other toxics is clear enough for action right now.  Look at EPA’s own estimate of the number of newborns at risk of elevated mercury exposure, which has doubled to 630,000.  EPA also found that one in six pregnant women has mercury levels in her blood above EPA’s safe threshold. 

The National Academy of Sciences has confirmed scientific research showing that maternal consumption of unsafe levels of mercury in fish can cause neuro-developmental harm in children, resulting in learning disabilities, poor motor function, mental retardation, seizures and cerebral palsy. 

Just last week a new peer-reviewed study by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Center for Children’s Health and the Environment, found that our country loses two billion dollars each year from the impact of mercury on children’s brain development. 

Mercury emissions have also contaminated ten million acres of lakes and 400,000 miles of streams, and they have triggered advisories in 45 States warning America’s 41 million recreational fishermen that the fish they catch may not be safe to eat. 

Yet it seems that many in Congress have wanted to join the Administration in trying to avoid any public daylight on this flawed rule.  The Environment and Public Works Committee has refused to even hold a single hearing on this rule.   

One reason for the Administration’s lack of candor clearly is the discovery that this rule has polluting industries’ fingerprints all over it.  EPA’s first proposal for these rules lifted exact texts from memoranda provided by utility industry lobbyists.  Another reason may be because the American people would find a process where the lobbyists are shut in and the public is shut out, where the scientific and economic analysis was manipulated, and where the public’s health was ignored. 

EPA’s own Inspector General and the General Accountability Office criticized almost every aspect of how EPA drafted this rule.  Unfortunately, their recommendations to improve it were also ignored.  So were more than 680,000 public comments – a record for any EPA rule.  So were the comments of many state environment departments, attorneys general, doctors, educators, sportsmen groups and EPA’s own advisory committees.  And, although it should not come as a surprise after four years working with this Administration, the comments of 45 Senate and 184 House members were also ignored.

Instead they produced a rule that will do nothing for at least a decade, despite years of analysis by EPA showing the need for quick action.  According to EPA’s own Regulatory Impact Analysis, we will be lucky if one percent of power plant capacity will have mercury controls by 2015, and only three percent by 2020. 

As a Vermonter I know it is “appropriate and necessary” to limit the pollution plumes from grandfathered power plants.  You cannot even see my state on EPA’s maps showing mercury pollution because so much of it is being dumped on us from upwind power plants.  Vermonters and New Englanders have been waiting for decades for EPA to take action so that our lakes can be cleaned up.

For all their talk of family values, the Administration has again put the value of corporate contributions -- not families -- first.  It is not a family value to tell a whole generation of women that their health is not important.  It is not a family value to put another generation of young kids at risk of learning disabilities.  These mercury rules do just that.

It is time to put people first, and to stop letting the big polluters and the special interests write the rules and run the show over at EPA.

The people we represent in the United States Senate will be watching the choice that the Senate -- and that we as individual Senators -- will make in this vote.  Will we side with the American people, or with the big polluters?

If we let the Administration’s rollback of mercury limits stand, what will we say to the families and the communities who live downwind of these mercury plumes?  And what will we say to the families who live in the hotspots of today, or of tomorrow?

This rule would leave mercury pollution from power plants, the largest emitter of mercury in the United States, as the only source of toxic air pollution that is allowed to avoid rigorous emissions standards under the Clean Air Act.  That is a daily, tangible and dangerous risk to the health of the American people that we need not, and we should not, accept.

The Administration’s mercury rule is a danger to America’s women and children.  It is time to do it over, and to get it right.  I urge support of the motion to proceed. 

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