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This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

Margaret Janes and Joe Lovett

Put common good above political pull

Earlier this month, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection ordered a statewide fish consumption advisory because fish contain toxic levels of mercury. DEP’s advisory, which applies to every water body in the state, is a long-overdue admission that it is dangerous to eat more than one or two meals of fish per month from any West Virginia lake, river or stream.

That we have allowed our waters to become so polluted is shameful. More than 30 years after the passage of the federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, the DEP admits that it has failed to enforce the law so much that we can no longer safely eat fish caught in our streams or lakes.

This widespread mercury pollution harms not only our economy, but our health. Chronic exposure to mercury affects the development of children’s nervous systems. Such exposure results in loss of attention, fine motor function, language, spatial perception and memory, plus permanent IQ loss. In addition to these devastating impacts on developing children, there is evidence that exposure to mercury can cause impaired vision, lost coordination, slurred speech, damaged hearing, inability to walk, mental problems and adverse effects on blood pressure regulation and cardiac function in adults.

Mercury is also listed as a possible human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. New findings from EPA indicate mercury is concentrated in fetal blood, meaning that the risk of mercury poisoning in fetuses is now twice what was previously thought. One-sixth of all U.S. women of childbearing age carry blood mercury levels that threaten the health of their fetuses.

Coal-fired power plants, the largest source of mercury pollution in the United States, are responsible for much of this contamination, and controlling their emissions is a key to restoring the health of our waters. Although technology is available that would clean up this mess, both the Bush administration and the state DEP have refused to force coal-fired power plants to use it. Sadly, the Bush administration is listening to lobbyists from the coal and power industries, and protecting them at the expense of our children and economic future.

It is time for this acquiescence to stop. The Bush administration and the DEP must require the power industry to stop harming our children. It is time to put the common good above the interests of campaign contributors. DEP’s statewide fish advisory is a small step in the right direction; it is an admission of the problem from an agency that has for too long cavalierly allowed polluters to poison our waters with mercury.

Earlier this year, when the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment formally asked the DEP to order cleanup plans for all of the mercury-polluted rivers, lakes and streams, the agency flatly refused. Instead of taking action to protect us, DEP hid behind the flimsy excuse that the state is for the most part in compliance with an outdated numeric water quality standard for mercury that does not protect those who eat fish caught in the state.

The DEP has a history of construing its duty much too narrowly, and the current high level of mercury pollution is just one example of the consequences of this failure to force polluters to comply with the law. DEP’s legal duty is not simply to assure that a single numeric water quality standard is met, but to broadly protect the public uses of our waterways — including fishing and fish consumption. To do this, the agency is required to assure that all water bodies meet additional safety or “narrative” standards. These standards prohibit any substance in toxic amounts from interfering with the uses of our water. If DEP had complied with the law and implemented this standard, it would have prevented new mercury pollution and required a cleanup of the streams with mercury-laden fish.

Instead of taking action that will restore the health of waters, however, the DEP has merely issued the fish consumption advisory. It still refuses to take any concrete steps to remedy the pollution. It still refuses to follow the law.

EPA is now reviewing DEP’s decision to not clean up the mercury pollution in West Virginia. Given the history of the Bush administration’s close ties to the coal industry and the energy sector, we expect that EPA will approve the DEP decision without blinking an eye. Maybe we all ate too much mercury-laden fish as children to remember how to hold our leaders accountable.

Janes and Lovett are leaders of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, based in Lewisburg.

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