Glynn Wilson

Alabama Power’s Miller Steam Plant on the Locust Fork emits more mercury into the air than any other power plant in the country.

by Glynn Wilson

What do you know? Alabama is number one in something besides football: Mercury pollution.

And the source of that pollution just happens to be located along the river that inspired the creation of this independent online news outlet, the Locust Fork River.

While it’s not exactly a bragging matter, Alabama can now say it is among the “Dirty Dozen” states in the country for mercury pollution, along with Arkansas, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Kansas, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, according to a report out today by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Alabama Power’s coal-fired Miller Steam Plant in west Jefferson County on the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River released more mercury into the air in 2007 than any other power plant in the country.

The plant dumped almost a ton of toxic mercury into the air last year, an increase of about 14 percent over reported emissions in 2006. And Alabama Power’s Gaston Steam Plant in Shelby County ranked eighth in the country for mercury pollution, pumping 1,175 pounds of the toxic heavy metal into the air last year, a 4.9 percent increase over 2006.

Alabama had four of the worst plants on the list, including two of the 10 worst.

Ilan Levin, the senior attorney for the environmental watchdog group, pointed out that when mercury is released into the air it ends up in rivers, lakes, and soil and then moves up the food chain into humans. And he said the amounts shown in this report, gathered through the federal government’s Toxic Release Inventory database, are “extraordinarily high,” indicating the very real possibility of a “direct human health effect” on the population of Alabama.

Coal burning for power generation releases mercury when it is burned, and is known to cause a host of human health problems, including neurological damage and developmental delays in fetuses, infants, and children.

Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of mercury pollution into the nation’s air, accounting for about 40 percent of all mercury emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta show that about 6 percent of American women carry mercury concentrations at levels considered dangerous to fetuses. Learning problems and brain damage can be the result. Experts say mercury from power plants, a potent neurotoxin, causes brain damage in at least 630,000 babies born each year.

Reacting to the report, Alabama Power spokesman Michael Sznajderman told the conservative Birmingham News, which takes advertising money from Alabama Power and its parent corporation Southern Company, that the high numbers are the result of more power being generated at the plants last year, and due to the use of Wyoming coal, which contains less sulfur but more mercury.

Sznajderman defended the company’s pollution by saying it is working to install scrubbers at all of the company’s coal-fired plants that will “significantly” reduce those emissions in the coming years. He didn’t say why it has taken so long for the company to realize the problem was there, or why it is just now beginning to spend a tiny portion of its massive profits to address the issue.

In addition to the two plants in the top 10 nationally, Alabama Power owns and operates two more in the top 30 in mercury emissions. The Barry Steam Plant in Mobile was 25 on the list, pumping 711 pounds of mercury into the air, a 1.8 percent increase over last year. The Gorgas steam plant in Walker County was 28 on the list, pumping 642.6 pounds of mercury into the air last year.

Of course coal fueled almost half of the electricity generated in the United States in 2007 and provided 55 percent of the energy generated in Alabama, according the federal Energy Information Administration, an industry lobby group.

The Birmingham News reports that Alabama is a “power-hungry state,” with residential electric consumers ranking tops in the country in average consumption of electricity. But is that their fault? Or the power company’s?

Sznajderman said the scrubbers planned at the plants, designed to cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, are also projected to cut mercury emissions by 40 percent, although he offered no proof. The cost is estimated at $1 billion, he said, a tiny fraction of the profits of Southern Company.

In addition to its number one rank in mercury pollution, Alabama is also sixth in emissions of sulfur dioxide, 10th for nitrogen oxide, and ninth for carbon dioxide. Some legacy, eh?

The incoming administration of the new president, Barack Obama, will have to begin to deal with energy and environmental issues on day one, since the nation lost eight years under the lack of leadership by the administration of President George W. Bush. Corporations were allowed to pollute and profit at will, while virtually every federal agency was filled with industry- and GOP-loyalists who gutted attempts to regulate pollution and any push for the development of alternative energy sources.

Even now, the lame-duck Bush administration is trying to turn political-appointed jobs into civil-service jobs to try and circumvent Obama from having them fired.

“When the original Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, the electric utility industry persuaded Congress to not impose strict pollution controls on old power plants, because they would soon be replaced by newer state-of-the-art facilities,” Levin said. “Yet despite the industry’s promises, many of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants continue to operate. Pollution controls that dramatically reduce emissions are widely available, and already being used at many plants.

“But until the public and policymakers hold the electric-utility industry to its promised cleanup of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants, Americans will continue to bear unnecessary health and environmental costs,” he said. “Even though mercury removal is achievable, EPA has backed away from strict power-plant mercury regulation.”

In 2005, instead of requiring power plant mercury reductions, the Bush EPA opted for a weak cap-and-trade scheme which would have allowed power plants to either reduce their own mercury pollution or buy pollution credits from other plants.

And it’s no wonder Southern Company gets what it wants in Washington. According to Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics, Southern Company is the most generous donor to the Republican Party, giving more than $1.6 million since 2000. And Dwight Evans, Executive Vice President at Southern Company, was a pioneer in President Bush’s reelection campaign in 2004 – meaning he pledged to raise at least $100,000 in hard-money donations.

The Money Behind the Madness: Campaign Contributions Grease the Skids for Utilities

The company makes an annual profit of more than $15 billion, according to trade sources on the Web.

You can see today’s full new report at this Web link.

The Environmental Integrity Project is a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization established in March 2002 to advocate for more effective enforcement of environmental laws. It was founded by Eric Schaeffer, who was director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Regulatory Enforcement until he resigned in 2002, after publicly expressing his frustration with efforts of the Bush Administration to weaken enforcement of the Clean Air Act and other laws.

The group won a lawsuit against the Bush EPA back in February, and we had the story about as fast as any news organization in the country.

Tags: Alabama Ranks Number 1: In Mercury Pollution

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Environment News, Glynn Wilson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.