Power plants may get break on cleanups

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is leaning toward stretching out plans for reducing mercury pollution from power plants until 2018 after concluding that technology for quick cuts isn't available. Some plants would be able to buy their way out of reducing emissions.

The Environmental Protection Agency had offered options three months ago for reducing the 48 annual tons of mercury emitted from 1,100 coal-burning power plants, the largest source of the pollution. One favored reliance on a short-term technology, the other long-term market forces through which companies could buy rights to continue polluting from companies that do more than is required.

But studies co-sponsored by the Department of Energy and the utility industry have found there was no existing technology to remove mercury equally well from various types and grades of coal. EPA officials say that makes the first option to reduce the pollution to 34 tons by 2008 less feasible.

That leaves the second strategy — endorsed by industry — that would establish a nationwide cap of 15 tons on mercury pollution by 2018 by phasing in lower ceilings on each plant's pollution. Plants that reduce their pollution below a yet-to-be-determined ceiling for each one could then sell credits to plants that don't.

High doses of mercury can cause neurological damage.

"The debate is what's the best option, given the available technology. And we think that, given the state of technology, cap-and-trade is better — and we're leaning that way," said EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman.

EPA can turn to that approach only because the Bush administration decided in December that mercury should not be regulated as a toxic substance requiring maximum pollution controls, reversing a Clinton administration determination.

To meet a court-ordered deadline in a lawsuit brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council 12 years ago, the agency must issue a final decision before the end of 2004.

The idea of trading pollution rights rather than making every plant reduce emissions to a specified level coincides with a position endorsed by electric power producers.

"There currently is no commercially available mercury-specific control technology," said Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, representing utilities. "Our hope is that toward the end of this decade, we will have at least identified new technologies for removing mercury from different coal types and using different boiler configurations."