New Mercury rulings effect on N.M.

On Dec. 21, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the first-ever federal protections against toxic mercury from power plants. Mercury is a dangerous brain poison that poses a particular threat to prenatal babies and young children. Exposure in the bloodstreams of pregnant and nursing women can result in birth defects like learning disabilities, lowered IQ, deafness, blindness and cerebral palsy.

Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury pollution in the United States, pumping more than 33 tons into the air each year. Once in the air, mercury rains down and accumulates in the bodies of fish and shellfish. If people eat fish or seafood from polluted bodies of water, mercury accumulates in their bodies and can be passed from mother to child.

The Sierra Club applauds President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for protecting American families – particularly women and children – from this dangerous toxin and for standing up to polluters’ attempts to weaken this life-saving protection. At the three hearings that the EPA held on this issue, Americans showed overwhelming support for protecting children from mercury.

So how will this ruling affect coal plants in New Mexico?

San Juan Generating Station: In 2005, the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust, New Mexico Environment Department and the New Mexico attorney general won a consent decree with PNM that required PNM to make significant pollution reductions in several pollutants. Mercury was one of those pollutants. PNM made those improvements by 2009 and the level of Mercury emitted by San Juan is down by about 90 percent and well below the new limits announced by the EPA.

Four Corners Power Plant: Arizona Public Service (APS) operates Four Corners and owns a significant portion of it. APS has proposed to the EPA that it close units 1-3, which are older and very bad from a mercury-pollution perspective. This ruling is important as the cost analysis that APS did to reach the conclusion that these three older units should be closed assumed that the new mercury limits would be imposed as announced in December.

The other two units, 4-5, are planning to continue to operate. Their mercury emissions are much better than units 1-3 and will probably require minimal investments in new control technology to meet the new limits.