Groups Fight Effort To Reverse EPA Stance on Mercury - President Bush's reversal of a campaign promise on power plant pollution is cause for concern - Brief Article

National Wildlife, June-July, 2001

NWF has taken legal action demanding that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stand tough against the electric utility industry's attempt to derail its decision to regulate mercury and other toxic pollutants from the nation's power plants.

The action was prompted by the Bush administration's reversal on campaign promises to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and NWF's concern about the utility industry's influence over future regulations.

NWF acted on two fronts:

* Joined by nine other organizations, the Federation intervened on the side of EPA to oppose an electric industry lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals. That lawsuit seeks to overturn the agency's determination to regulate mercury.

* Along with 43 other organizations, NWF filed an official objection to a "groundless" administrative petition in which the industry asked EPA to back off from its mercury decision.

"For more than ten years, the electric utility industry has been trying to derail efforts to regulate its mercury emissions, despite mounting evidence of the public health and ecological risk of mercury exposure, and the increasing public and political support for national controls," says Felice Stadler, national policy director of NWF's Clean the Rain campaign.

Joining NWF in its "petition of opposition" were six of its state affiliates: Michigan United Conservation Clubs, the Minnesota Conservation Federation, the League of Ohio Sportsmen, the Indiana Wildlife Federation, the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Council of Maine.

NWF has campaigned hard for controls on power plant emissions of mercury, a powerful neurotoxin that builds up in the food chain, threatening the health of people and wildlife.

According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control, at least ten percent of women of childbearing age ingest mercury at rates above EPA's safe level, and an estimated 390,000 children are born each year at risk for neurological effects due to mercury exposure. (See page 10.)