[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 45 (Wednesday, April 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3409-S3410]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 MERCURY POLLUTION: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, as I have said many times on the floor of 
the Senate, I am blessed to come from and in fact represent a State in 
which people share a deep and abiding concern for the environment. In 
many ways, Vermont is an example to the Nation in its environmental 
ethics and its environmental action.
  We Vermonters are especially proud that much of the environmental 
progress the Nation has achieved in the last 3 decades is also part of 
the legacy of Vermont's own Robert Stafford. Senator Stafford's 
leadership in this body helped shape national environmental policy from 
the time the environmental movement was in its infancy, and then 
continued well into its maturity. In his role as chairman of the 
Committee on Environment and Public Works--a post that Senator Stafford 
assumed in 1981--Bob Stafford courageously and successfully stood up to 
the powerful interests who tried to roll back our environmental 
standards. Today, as we celebrate the 28th anniversary of Earth Day, I 
would like to take a moment to reflect on the progress we have made to 
protect our environment. But I also want to talk about the job that 
remains to be done.
  In the past few weeks, one of Vermont's great treasures, Lake 
Champlain, has received a great deal of attention. This has also 
offered an opportunity to explain one of the threats to Lake Champlain 
from toxic pollutants that are drifting into our State. One of these 
pollutants, mercury, should be of particular concern. Like lakes and 
waterways in most States, Lake Champlain now has fish advisories for 
walleye and lake trout and bass. All that is due to mercury.
  When I was growing up and I could spend parts of my summers on Lake 
Champlain, I never had to worry about eating the fish that I caught. 
Actually, I only had to worry about being good enough to catch them in 
the first place. But someday, when I take my grandson out fishing, I 
don't want to explain to him why he can't eat a fish he catches there. 
What I tell my grandson is largely a function of what direction we 
decide to take in Congress to protect the environment. Depending upon 
what we do here, that will determine whether I can tell him to eat the 
fish or not. Are we going to rest on our laurels, or are we going to 
build on the courageous steps that Bob Stafford and others took to 
protect our environment for future generations?
  We should be proud of the great strides we have made to reduce the 
level of many air and water pollutants, to rebuild populations of 
endangered species, and to clean up abandoned hazardous waste sites. 
And we are proud of that. But now we have to continue to address the 
environmental threats that do not have any easy solutions. One of these 
threats is the mercury that seeps into our air and water every day from 
coal-fired power plants and waste combustors and utility boilers. It is 
one of the last remaining toxins for which there is no control 
strategy.
  When we originally wrote the Clean Air Act, we didn't understand the 
dangers posed by mercury, but we have seen the dangers in our own 
State. Two high schools in my own State had to be closed for a week 
because there were small amounts of mercury found in the classrooms. 
But these were instances where you could actually see the mercury. The 
more elusive problems are the ones where the mercury goes through the 
air and water and we don't see it. With the release of the 
Environmental Protection Agency's Mercury Study Protection Report to 
Congress, we have the information to solve the problem of mercury 
pollution. We have the information to solve the problem. The question 
we have to ask is: Do we have the will to solve it?
  The report shows some very troubling levels of mercury in fish, and 
also estimates in the United States there are more than 1\1/2\ million 
pregnant women and their fetuses, women of childbearing age, and 
children who are at risk of brain and nerve development damage from 
mercury pollution.
  There are new facts of mercury pollution, too. Look at this chart. In 
1993, there were 27 States with fish advisories for mercury 
contamination. These are the States in red. There are 899 lakes, river 
segments and streams identified as yielding mercury-contaminated fish. 
That was just 5 years ago.
  Now let's see what has happened as we go to 1997. Look at how the red 
is filling up the country. You can see that 39 States have issued 
mercury fish advisories for 1,675 water bodies. This is where we are 
with mercury-contaminated fish; almost every State in the country, 
1,675 advisories.
  In only 5 years, it is an increase of 86 percent. We are going in the 
wrong direction. We are soon going to see the map totally red.
  What we should be doing, Mr. President, is trying to reverse course, 
getting rid of this mercury pollution and going back to where we can 
have a country without them.
  We pump 150 tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year--every 
year, year after year after year. It doesn't go away. It becomes more 
potent. We put a lot of love and time and energy and fiscal resources 
into our children, but we are not protecting them from the possibility 
of being poisoned by a potent neurotoxin.
  The critics of inaction are right. We can't tell to what degree 
people with learning disorders, coordination problems, hearing, sight 
or speech problems have been harmed by mercury pollution. We don't know 
how many little Sarahs or Johnnys would have been gifted physicians, 
poets or teachers but who now have no chance of reaching their full 
potential because they are exposed to mercury in the womb or during 
early childhood.
  Just as with lead, we know that mercury has much graver effects on 
children at very low levels than it does on adults. It is insidious.
  Because we can't measure how much potential has been lost, some 
special interests say we should continue to do nothing.
  Our late colleague, Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, put it well when 
he

[[Page S3410]]

said, ``[t]he first responsibility of Congress is not the making of 
technological or economic judgments. Our responsibility is to establish 
what the public interest requires''--requires--``to protect the health 
of persons.''
  We have enough information to act. We don't have to wait until we 
have a body count. We have the information, now we need the will, and 
we should have the will to act.
  I propose we put a stop to this poisoning of America. Mercury can be 
removed from products. It has been done. Mercury can be removed from 
coal-fired powerplants, and it should be done. We should limit the 
mercury that enters our environment from coal-fired powerplants, waste 
incinerators, and large industrial boilers and other known sources.
  Americans have a right to know what is being spewed out of these 
facilities and into their backyards and into the food of their 
children. We in Congress have the responsibility to give them the 
knowledge and the tools to protect their children.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). The Chair notifies the Senator 
from Vermont that initially there were 23 minutes to each side. Senator 
Kennedy, by unanimous consent, claimed 15 minutes of the 23 minutes. 
Therefore, we are now into Senator Kennedy's time.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, that wasn't precisely the way that I recall 
the intent of the unanimous consent agreement, but let me just say 
this. The EPA report estimates the cost nationally of controlling 
mercury from powerplants at $5 billion per year, and this is an 
industry that generates more than $200 billion a year in revenue. That 
is less than 2.5 percent. It strikes me as being the equivalent of a 
fly on an elephant's back. We can do a lot better.
  The residents of Colchester, VT have been fighting for 7 years to 
clean up a waste incinerator in their backyard that they were 
originally told was clean enough to toast marshmallows in. Well, now we 
know better and we need to require this and other facilities to 
eliminate mercury emissions.
  One of the largest sources of mercury is coal-fired power plants. 
With States deregulating their utility industries, Congress today has a 
unique opportunity to make sure these powerplants begin to internalize 
the cost of their pollution.
  Many of the problems the Clean Air Act of 1970 was drafted to solve 
are being addressed. But one thing has not worked out the way Congress 
originally envisioned. It seemed back then that old, dirty, inefficient 
power plants would eventually be retired and replaced by a new 
generation of clean and efficient plants. The concept worked with 
tailpipe controls on cars. Eventually the fleet turns over and the 
dirty ones are out of circulation.
  But, 28 years later, many utilities continue to operate dirty, 
inefficient plants that were built in the 1950s or before. These plants 
are subject to much less stringent pollution controls than are new 
facilities, and what we now have is a big loophole, and these plants 
are pouring pollution through it.
  If we don't level the pollution playing field now, in a deregulated 
industry the financial incentive will be to pump even more power and 
pollution out of these plants for as long as they will last. As long as 
the rules of the game allow this, these utility companies are acting in 
a manner that suits solely their economic self interest. As a nation, 
we cannot afford to subsidize their inefficiency, but our inaction does 
just that.
  We will hear a lot of rhetoric about how much implementing this bill 
will cost. I want to address those complaints up front. The cost 
argument does not hold water. I say it again, the EPA report estimates 
the cost nationally of controlling mercury from power plants at $5 
billion per year, and this industry generates more than $200 billion a 
year in revenue. That is less that two and a half percent, and that 
strikes me as being the equivalent of a fly on an elephant's back.
  Mercury pollution is a key piece of unfinished business in cleaning 
up our environment. The poisoning of America's lakes, rivers, lands, 
and citizens with mercury pollution can be stopped. It is unnecessary, 
and continuing to ignore it mortgages the health of our children and 
grandchildren.
  I yield to the Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

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