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This news article originally provided by The Charleston Gazette

Court backs limit on PPG mercury emissions

DEP moving to loosen firm's permit anyway

By Ken Ward Jr.
Staff writer

State regulators were wrong to give a PPG Industries plant in Marshall County a two-year waiver of state water pollution limits for the toxic metal mercury, a circuit judge has ruled.

Kanawha Circuit Judge Irene Berger concluded last week that the state Department of Environmental Protection should not have granted PPG the pollution waiver in a July 2005 permit.

In a 12-page decision, Berger backed the state Environmental Quality Board, which in July 2006 overturned the DEP action.

The judge noted PPG already had been given previous extensions as part of compliance schedules, including one in its previous permit renewal in 2001.

“In essence, WVDEP granted PPG a variance to the ... water quality standards,” Berger wrote in Friday’s ruling. “The board’s decision to revoke the compliance schedule is appropriate.”

DEP Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer is moving to loosen the PPG permit anyway. Draft permit changes issued in February and earlier this month would greatly increase the amount of mercury PPG can discharge into the Ohio River.

“We are pleased that Judge Berger affirmed the decision of the Environmental Quality Board holding that the permit issued by the DEP was illegal,” said Joe Lovett, a lawyer with the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. “But we’re still concerned that DEP is about to allow PPG to discharge this mercury by issuing another get-out-of-jail free card.”

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

Of particular concern is the fact that mercury becomes more concentrated as 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.

The PPG plant at Natrium, north of New Martinsville, is West Virginia’s largest source of mercury discharges to water and the state’s third largest source of mercury air emissions, according to federal emissions data.

Part of the PPG facility makes chlorine by pumping saltwater through vats of pure mercury. It is one of only five chlor-alkali facilities across the country that still uses — or has not promised to phase out — this century-old process, according to the environmental group Oceana.

Local environmental groups, including the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, have joined with Oceana to try to reduce or eliminate PPG’s mercury emissions.

Berger ruled on a case in which the Rivers Coalition had appealed the DEP’s July 2005 renewal of the company’s water pollution permit. The DEP had given the company a two-year waiver to comply with a mercury discharge limit, after backing off tougher such limits previously in 1988, 1994 and 2001.

The environmental board ruled against the DEP, and PPG appealed that decision to Berger.

PPG also had argued that the DEP wrongly refused to give the company’s plant a “mixing zone” it had been seeking for several years.

Now, the DEP has proposed to grant PPG mixing zones for two of its mercury discharge pipes. If approved, this will allow PPG to meet water quality limits farther downstream, rather than at the end of its outlet pipes. The mixing zone allows the company to take advantage of the dilution that occurs as the pollution moves down the Ohio River, and increases the total allowable water emissions.

The most recent DEP proposal, issued June 13, would increase the average monthly discharge limit of mercury from the plant’s main outlet from 12 parts per trillion to 143 parts per trillion, agency records show.

The DEP said in permit documents the mixing zone would be eliminated by 2013. The agency also says the permit charge will not actually increase PPG’s mercury emissions.

Larry O’Reilly, a PPG spokesman, has said the company is requesting permit limits that “will allow the facility to continue operating, and retain the more than 100 jobs and related economic benefits to the surrounding communities.”

Lovett said the Manchin administration should be pushing PPG to eliminate its mercury discharge altogether, as the company did at its similar facility in Lake Charles, La.

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

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