PRESS RELEASE

 

For Immediate Release:                                Contact:

Friday, February 8, 2008                                    Paul Ertelt, (518) 449-3870,

                                                                       paulertelt@adk.org

Mercury Ruling a Major Victory for Adirondacks, Catskills

In a ruling that will have a significant environmental impact on the Adirondacks and Catskills, a federal appeals court today struck down the Bush administration’s plan to regulate power plant mercury emissions through a cap and trade system.

“This is major victory in our battle to protect wilderness ecosystems from the ravages of mercury contamination,” said Adirondack Mountain Club Executive Director Neil F. Woodworth. “Two recent studies have linked coal-fired power plants to mercury hotspots in the Adirondacks and Catskills.”

This victory clears the way for enforcement of Clean Air Act provisions that will require utilities to install air pollution control devices to remove mercury from their power plant emissions, Woodworth said. Those devices will also eliminate the pollutants that cause acid rain.

The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) joined with more than a dozen states, leading medical, health care and public health groups, and several prominent national environmental advocacy groups to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR). 

In January 2007, ADK filed a brief with the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia asserting that CAMR is an illegal attempt to weaken the strict mercury emission controls set forth in the Clean Air Act. ADK was represented in the case by Woodworth, who is also the group’s chief counsel, and Leah W. Casey of Carter, Conboy, Case, Blackmore, Maloney & Laird.

In enacting the Clean Air Act, Congress provided for strict limits on mercury emissions through the installation of maximum achievable control technology, which Congress made applicable to all coal-burning power plants. By contrast, the EPA administrative rule challenged in this lawsuit would have delayed for two decades the elimination of airborne mercury emissions as a source of mercury toxins in the Northeast.

Furthermore, the contested rule would have allowed many of the worst polluters to buy “pollution rights,” continue to release mercury up their smokestacks and perpetuate mercury hot spots in New York and the Northeast.  


The Adirondacks and Catskills are downwind of numerous coal-burning power plants, whose mercury emissions contribute significantly to mercury pollution in these regions.  A 2007 independent study by the Charles Driscoll and the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation estimated that mercury emissions from US coal-fired power plants are responsible for 40 percent to 65 percent of mercury deposition in the Northeast. 


Current levels of mercury deposition in the Northeast are four to six times higher than the levels recorded in 1900. Ninety-six percent of the lakes in the Adirondack region and 40 percent of the lakes in New Hampshire and Vermont exceed the recommended EPA action level for methyl mercury in fish. 


High mercury levels in fish from six reservoirs in the Catskills have prompted advisories that infants, children under the age of 15, and women of childbearing age should not eat any fish from these reservoirs.  Further, mercury is present in two-thirds of Adirondack loons at levels that negatively impact their reproductive capacity, posing a significant risk to their survival. 


The Adirondack Mountain Club, founded in 1922, is a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the New York State Forest Preserve and other wild lands and waters through conservation and advocacy, environmental education and responsible recreation.

 

Click here to read a pdf version of the court's decision.

Click here to read a pdf version of ADK's brief.