Fisheries Management & Legislative Report

HOUSTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed rules Wednesday that would for the first time regulate toxic air emissions from B.L. England in Upper Township and other coal-fired power plants in the nation, including limiting mercury, lead, arsenic and acid gas pollution.

Environmental and medical groups praised the move, which came in response to a court-ordered deadline, saying the new regulations will remove toxins from the air that contribute to respiratory illnesses, birth defects and developmental problems in children.

Some industry groups criticized the measure and accused the EPA of inflating the benefits and arguing it would cost billions of dollars annually to comply.

Currently, there are no limits on how much mercury or other toxic pollutants can be released from a power plant’s smoke stacks — which emit some 386,000 tons of toxic air pollution annually, by far the largest industrial source of such pollution in the United States. The new rules would require power plants to install technologies that would limit the emissions.

The Sierra Club petitioned the EPA in February to hold New Jersey to a 2006 consent agreement after the plant’s owner, RC Cape May, asked for more time to make pollution upgrades to the plant, which has three boilers – two that burn coal and a third that burns oil only when energy demand is at its peak.

The plant has to install a $50 million pollution control called Selective Catalytic Reduction on one of its two coal-fired boilers to capture nitrogen oxide by the end of next year. And it must install a particulate scrubber by 2013. The company in 2008 announced a plan to invest more than $200 million in upgrades at the power plant.

The EPA said the regulations proposed Wednesday would reduce mercury emissions from these power plants by 91 percent. The rules would also further limit other pollutants, including particulate matter, such as dust, dirt and other fragments associated with a variety of respiratory ailments.

This standard “will save lives, prevent illnesses and promote vital economic opportunities across the country,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, who invited second-graders to attend the event in Washington, D.C., where she signed the proposal.

Reaching into her own history, Jackson described how her son — an asthmatic — spent his first Christmas in the hospital “literally fighting to breathe.” “With the help of existing technologies, we will be able to take reasonable steps that will provide dramatic protections to our children and loved ones, preventing premature deaths, heart attacks and asthma attacks.”

The court order gave the EPA until November to make the rules official. Jackson said companies would then have three years to comply, and some could be given an extra year. Such rules would have the greatest impact on Texas, which is home to more coal-fired power plants than any other state. Texas has at least 19 coal-fired plants and 10 more in various stages of permitting and construction. The Environmental Defense Fund says seven of the top 25 mercury-emitting power plants are in the Lone Star State, four of those are in the Top 10.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates air emissions from the state’s coal-fired power plants, said it already regulates mercury from new plants, in a case-by-case strategy that requires pollution control technologies based on the type of coal being used by the facility. Some coals burn cleaner than others. These regulations do not apply to existing facilities.

Jeff Holmstead, who served as the EPA’s top air official from 2000 to 2005 and now heads the Environmental Strategy Group at the Bracewell & Giuliani law firm in Washington, D.C., said the new rules are inefficient, costly and provide few benefits to the environment or public health. “It seems to be just another way to attack coal and coal-fired power,” Holmstead said.

The EPA said it would cost nearly $11 billion a year for industry to comply with the new rule, prompting Holmstead to define it as “by far the most expensive rule that EPA has ever done.”

The agency, joined by medical groups including the American Lung Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, estimated that the value of health benefits associated with reduced exposure to fine particles could be from $59 billion to $140 billion by 2016. The EPA estimates it could save 17,000 lives a year and generate 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs.

“Dirty air makes children sick, that’s the long and short of it,” said Marion Burton, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “If you think it’s expensive to install a scrubber, you should see how much it costs to treat a child born with a birth defect that was preventable.”

Studies show exposure to mercury increases the risk of birth defects as well as developmental problems in small children.

Jackson said the EPA’s models found installing the technologies could increase energy rates by about $3 to $4 a month, though it could be less depending on fuel costs. For example, she said, a New Jersey provider that already installed pollution-cutting technologies recently reduced its rates.

A report by the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies, argued the toxic air regulation is only one of several rules slated to go into effect in or around 2015 — rules that could cost industry about $100 billion. The council says studies have found that for every $1 billion spent on upgrades and compliance, 16,000 jobs will be put at risk.

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.

The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.

So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.

But the relatively new drilling method — known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking — carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas.

With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium, all of which can occur naturally thousands of feet underground. Other carcinogenic materials can be added to the wastewater by the chemicals used in the hydrofracking itself.

While the existence of the toxic wastes has been reported, thousands of internal documents obtained by The New York Times from the Environmental Protection Agency, state regulators and drillers show that the dangers to the environment and health are greater than previously understood.

The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle.

Other documents and interviews show that many E.P.A. scientists are alarmed, warning that the drilling waste is a threat to drinking water in Pennsylvania. Their concern is based partly on a 2009 study, never made public, written by an E.P.A. consultant who concluded that some sewage treatment plants were incapable of removing certain drilling waste contaminants and were probably violating the law.

The Times also found never-reported studies by the E.P.A. and a confidential study by the drilling industry that all concluded that radioactivity in drilling waste cannot be fully diluted in rivers and other waterways.

But the E.P.A. has not intervened. In fact, federal and state regulators are allowing most sewage treatment plants that accept drilling waste not to test for radioactivity. And most drinking-water intake plants downstream from those sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania, with the blessing of regulators, have not tested for radioactivity since before 2006, even though the drilling boom began in 2008.

In other words, there is no way of guaranteeing that the drinking water taken in by all these plants is safe.

Link to original article.

TRENTON - Governor Christie signed a bill into law today that creates a free State saltwater fishing registry in New Jersey, one that will comply with federal requirements and will not financially impact the State's saltwater anglers.

The creation of a State registry will allow New Jersey anglers to avoid a $15 saltwater registration fee imposed by the federal government as of Jan. 1.

"Fishing from our shores has been and should remain free to our residents. Some simple pleasures in life should be not be subject to a new unfunded federal mandate,'' said Governor Christie.

Creation of a free State registry was lauded by the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance which worked closely with the Governor's Office and the DEP on this issue.

"We realize the DEP has profound responsibilities to protect public health, safety and the environment, all with increasingly limited room for budgetary maneuvers,'' said Anthony Mauro, chairman of the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance. "So we applaud DEP Commissioner Bob Martin for working to implement this bill in the most efficient means possible within his agency's current budget."

Saltwater fishing is an important economic engine for New Jersey, providing 38,000 jobs and a $1.2 billion annual boost to the state's economy, noted Commissioner Martin.

"The DEP recognizes the importance of protecting and managing our marine resources for the benefit of the environment, hundreds of thousands of anglers who enjoy this resource, to our multi-billion dollar tourism industry, and the thousands of jobs related to saltwater fishing,'' said Commissioner Martin, who thanked the New Jersey Outdoor Alliance for its efforts.

"We will work to get this new registry on line as soon as possible,'' Commissioner Martin added.

Beginning on Jan. 1, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration required saltwater anglers in states like New Jersey without a state saltwater fishing registry or saltwater fishing license to pay $15 to register with that agency. The registry requirement is part of an effort to improve the quality of data used in fisheries management, according to NOAA.