EPA aims to cut power plants' mercury pollution

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration on Monday proposed giving power plants up to 15 years to install new technology aimed solely at reducing mercury pollution, a week after science advisers said the government should be issuing stronger mercury warnings to pregnant women.

The Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever proposed controls on mercury pollution from power plants would require immediate action in some cases once they took effect by the end of 2004, senior EPA officials say. But they would be less than the limits envisioned by the Clinton administration, letting owners in some cases delay meeting requirements until 2018. They would let industry meet the first six years' goals by using pollution controls already installed to stem smog and acid rain.

Monday was the deadline for EPA to propose mercury limits for coal-fired power plants under a settlement with Natural Resources Defense Council. The council is an environmental group that had sued during the Clinton administration to force the regulations. The rule must be made final within a year.

"These actions represent the largest air reductions of any kind not specifically mandated by Congress," said Mike Leavitt, the new EPA administrator. "We are calling for the largest single industry investment in any clean air program in U.S. history."

EPA also proposed a measure for power plants to cut smog- and soot-forming chemicals from their smokestacks. Together, the programs are estimated to cost $5 billion or more for industry to implement.

But while EPA said it was concerned about mercury, the Food and Drug Administration was told last week by a scientific advisory panel that it should provide clearer advice to pregnant women and young children on the risks from mercury in their diet.

The panel told FDA that it could do a better job of spreading word on which fish have too much mercury, particularly that white, or albacore, tuna has nearly three times as much mercury as cheaper "light" tuna.

The Bush administration mercury plan differs greatly from the Clinton administration approach. According to EPA documents obtained by the National Environmental Trust, an environmental advocacy group, the EPA in December 2001 estimated mercury could be cut by as much as 90 percent, to 5.5 tons, by 2008 if the best available technology were used under the planned Clinton regulations.

But the White House and Leavitt want to allow utilities to rely for the first six years on mercury pollution controls already installed to stem other pollutants that cause smog and acid rain.