This news story originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

State asked to get tough on mercury pollution

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition on Thursday asked a state board to crack down on mercury pollution from West Virginia’s largest source of the potent neurotoxin.

Coalition lawyers asked the state Environmental Quality Board to slash the amount of mercury the PPG Industries plant at Natrium can discharge into the Ohio River.

Joe Lovett, a coalition lawyer, asked the board to throw out a two-year waiver of tougher, new mercury limits in the latest version of PPG’s state water pollution permit.

“Mercury is a pollutant of priority concern,” said Lovett, director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. “It is toxic, is persistent in the environment, and accumulates.”

Every year, the PPG plant pumps more than 1,200 pounds of mercury into the air. The plant, north of New Martinsville, also leads the state in mercury discharged into streams.

The PPG facility, along the Ohio River in southern Marshall County, makes chlorine by pumping saltwater through vats of pure mercury.

The Natrium plant is one of only nine chlor-alkali facilities across the country that still use this 111-year-old process.

Earlier this year, the DEP renewed PPG’s water pollution permit for five years. In doing so, DEP water director Lisa McClung gave the company a two-year waiver to comply with new mercury discharge limits.

Lovett noted that the DEP has repeatedly given the company similar extensions, which avoids any tightening of the plant’s mercury limits.

DEP officials in several administrations backed off tougher mercury limits in 1988, 1994 and 2001 when PPG challenged those limits, according to a review of state government records.

“This plant, because it uses this outdated technology, is the No. 1 mercury polluter in West Virginia,” Lovett told the board. “DEP cannot continually give it extensions to the mercury limits to allow this technology.”

Jay Lazell, a DEP lawyer, said state law allows for extensions like the one the agency gave PPG. “That’s what we’re relying on here,” he said.

In Thursday’s hearing, PPG lawyers also challenged part of the permit renewal language issued by the DEP.

Company officials asked the DEP to grant the plant a “mixing zone” — an area downstream from the plant where water quality limits would not apply — to allow mercury discharges to be diluted by the river water.

Matt Sweeney, a DEP permit engineer, refused. Sweeney said mixing zones are not allowed for bio-accumulative pollutants like mercury under multi-state water pollution limits, set by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, or ORSANCO.

PPG lawyer David Yaussy brought ORSANCO Executive Director Alan Vicory to Thursday’s hearing to testify for the company.

Currently, the ORSANCO rules grandfather in mixing zones for existing bio-accumulative discharges that already had mixing zones before the rule was passed in 2003.

Vicory told the board that he personally did not think that was the original intent of the 2003 rule. Instead, Vicory said, he believes ORSANCO meant to grandfather in mixing zones for any existing bio-accumulative discharges — whether they already had mixing zones or not.

Vicory said that earlier this month ORSANCO’s standards committee asked commission staff to write a new rule to “clarify” the mixing zone policy.

That happened, Vicory said, after David Flannery — an industry lawyer in Charleston who also represents West Virginia on the commission and chairs the ORSANCO standards committee — brought the PPG permit appeal to Vicory’s attention.

Under cross-examination by Lovett, Vicory said Flannery had called him and asked him if he would be willing to discuss the issue with Yaussy.

Questioned by DEP’s Lazell, Vicory acknowledged the state had sent ORSANCO a copy of PPG’s draft permit and the commission never raised the issue during a public comment period.

Vicory also said he and ORSANCO would support the DEP’s refusal to give PPG a mixing zone, because it is a more stringent permit limit and more protective of water quality.

In fact, Vicory said, ORSANCO has adopted a policy that advocates elimination of all discharge of bio-accumulative pollutants like mercury into the Ohio River within 10 years.

Depending on the dose, human health effects from exposure to mercury can include subtle loss of sensory and cognitive ability, tremors, inability to walk and death.

Today, of particular concern is the fact that mercury becomes more concentrated at it passes from a mother to her fetus. Children are at risk of having to struggle to keep up in school or needing remedial classes or special education.

In West Virginia, residents are cautioned to limit the locally caught fish they eat to avoid mercury poisoning.

Nationally, regulators are beginning to focus on mercury from chlor-alkali plants such as PPG, because they emit far more mercury on average than coal-fired power stations.

In August, PPG announced it was replacing the mercury-based system with a cleaner technology at a similar plant in Louisiana. So far, PPG officials have said they have no plans to consider a similar upgrade for their Natrium plant.

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348-1702.