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This article originally appeared in the The Charleston Gazette

UMW criticizes Bush on mercury rules

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff Writer

The United Mine Workers union said Monday that a Bush administration plan to reduce mercury emissions from power plants favors the western coal industry over Appalachian mine operators.

UMW President Cecil Roberts said the proposal allows plants burning sub-bituminous coal from Wyoming to emit twice as much mercury as those using bituminous coal found in Appalachia and the Midwest.

Roberts said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plan, if finalized, would cause a “large-scale shift in production from Appalachia and the Midwest to the West.”

“Some industry folks in these areas are already publicly bemoaning what a John Kerry presidency might mean for coal, but here we have the federal EPA, under the direction of President Bush, advocating proposals that will severely devastate the coal industry in several regions nationwide — including theirs,” Roberts said in a news release.

In newspaper ads last week, the Bush-Cheney campaign said that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has a “19-year record in the Senate of supporting anti-coal policies that would devastate the industry in West Virginia.”

The ads cited Kerry’s support for efforts to curb global warming and against an effort by U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., to overturn a court ruling that limited mountaintop removal mining.

On the mercury issue, Kerry has sided with environmental groups that said the Bush proposal is inadequate to address a known health threat.

Mercury is a highly toxic chemical, especially to developing fetuses. It can cause severe neurological and developmental problems, including poor attention span and delayed language development, impaired memory and vision, and problems processing information.

Last month, a new EPA study found that between 300,000 and 600,000 of the 4 million babies born in the United States in 2000 may have been exposed to “unacceptable” levels of mercury because their mothers ate a diet rich in fish.

Electric power plants are the nation’s largest uncontrolled source of mercury into the environment.

The Bush administration dropped a proposal that could have eliminated 90 percent of power plant mercury emissions. Instead, the EPA proposed a “cap-and-trade” approach that would reduce mercury by 70 percent by 2018. Under such proposals, companies must meet overall emissions caps, but can spread the reductions among various plants. Critics say such rules lead to pollution hot spots in areas where reductions are not made.

Last week, EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt agreed to extend the public comment period on his agency’s mercury reduction proposal by two months. Leavitt also said he would delay final agency action from December 2004 until March 2005.

Environmental groups had sought the delays, wanting more time to comment and urging EPA to do more analysis of the issue.

In previous congressional testimony, the UMW had generally supported the less stringent “cap-and-trade” approach, but with a less firm timeline and cap.

The National Mining Association has praised the Bush proposal, saying that “the flexibility inherent in a well-designed emissions trading program ... is preferable to the rigidities of unit or source-specific controls.”

EPA has said that it is more difficult to control and reduce mercury emissions from lower-heating coals such as sub-bituminous coal. More research on such technology is needed, EPA said.

On Friday, the union harshly criticized the regional variations in emissions limits that would result from the EPA proposal.

“Fact is, the Tri-State region of West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania has already lost 4,000 mining jobs since Bush took office,” Roberts said. “We believe the EPA mercury rules will only increase those numbers.”

Frank O’Donnell, a spokesman for the Clean Air Trust in Washington, D.C., agreed with the UMW that “the EPA proposal seems illogically crafted to aid sub-bituminous and lignite coal.

“But, the UMW approach would unnecessarily delay needed reductions in mercury,” O’Donnell added.

“To be honest, I am actually a little surprised that the union would promote the concept of emission trading here, since the acid rain trading program is generally credited with boosting western coal production at the expense of higher-sulfur bituminous coal,” he said.

“I am even more surprised because it is generally believed to be easier to remove more mercury from bituminous coal than from other types of coal,” O’Donnell said. “I would think more mining jobs would be created if EPA set a tough, across-the-board mercury standard.”

Wendy Radcliff, who follows air pollution issues for the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, said, “The health of West Virginians should not be overlooked in the argument of East versus West coal production.

“The UMW is right to be concerned about the Bush administration’s plans, but they should be concerned that Bush does not have a plan that will immediately address the health effects of mercury on the environment and health of children and pregnant women,” Radcliff said.

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