Missoula City Goverment Protests Bush Mercury Emission Standards

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MISSOULA - This city's Air Pollution Control Board plans to protest the Bush administration's proposed mercury emission standards, saying they offer too little, too late.

In the draft of a letter expected to be sent to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt, the board says mercury already pollutes Montana's waterways and the proposed limits would allow further degradation. "The projected reductions do not reflect what is technologically feasible and fall far short of what is needed to provide appropriate public health and environmental protection," the letter says. It was written for board members by Sandrah Mack, an air-quality specialist at the City-County Health Department.

Coal-fired power plants are believed to be the source of 92 percent of industrial mercury emissions in Montana and one-third of the nation's overall mercury emissions. The EPA's rules will have no effect unless they focus on - and get tough with - emissions from coal-fired power plants, the draft letter contends.

The Clinton administration proposed rules cutting mercury pollution by 90 percent by 2008 and forcing utilities to install "best available technology." The Bush administration scrapped that proposal and substituted a plan regulating mercury in the same manner as other pollutants, and giving utilities until 2018 to comply. The Bush plan did not require that best available technology be used."

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