Evansville Courier & Press and wire reports
INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana will cut mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants by two-thirds over the next two decades under a federal rule approved by a state panel that turned down requests for even deeper cuts.
Late Wednesday, the Indiana Air Pollution Control Board voted 11-1 to adopt the minimum federal Clean Air Mercury Rule.
Environmentalists have said the reduction goal falls short because mercury is a potent neurotoxin that ends up in the food chain and can lower the intelligence of children whose mothers eat tainted fish during pregnancy.
The rule requires a 66 percent cut in Indiana's mercury emissions by 2018. However, the state won't actually meet that goal until 2025 because of a provision that allows plants that stay below their mercury cap to "bank" or sell their emission credits to plants exceeding the cap.
The Hoosier Environmental Council had pushed for reducing mercury emissions by 90 percent by 2010. Representatives of the utility industry argued that doing so would lead to big rate hikes for consumers.
The federal EPA standards were the minimum allowable, but individual states have the option of adopting more stringent standards.
Vectren Corp., the electric utility serving parts of Southwest Indiana, generally supported incorporating the federal EPA standards because they create a level playing field, Vectren spokesman Mike Roeder said.
Locally, Vectren has two coal-fired power plants, in Warrick and Posey counties. Roeder noted that Vectren has spent $250 million in pollution control technologies over the past five years. When a scrubber is completed at its Warrick plant next year, it should reduce the mercury output by 65 percent.
"We are well under way, maybe ahead of some utilities, in how we're treating mercury and other pollutants," Roeder said.
A metallic liquid in its pure form, mercury is a byproduct of power generation using coal, such as that mined in Southwestern Indiana and elsewhere. Emissions of mercury released into the atmosphere eventually fall as rain and are deposited in rivers and streams, where the metal can accumulate in fish.
The toxic metal poses the greatest risk of nerve and brain damage to pregnant women, women of childbearing age, young children and fetuses, medical experts told the air board in May.
But even if the state adopted stricter standards on an earlier timetable, the electricity industry had contended at the May hearing that the mercury-control technology is unproven - and reductions in emissions would not translate into comparable mercury reductions in the environment.