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MERCURY EMISSIONS

Time for PGE to clear the air at Boardman

Monday, June 19, 2006

Oregonians, particularly those living in the Columbia River Gorge, can breathe a little easier now that Portland General Electric's coal-fired power plant in Boardman is again off-line for the foreseeable future. After remaining idle for most of the winter, the aging plant encountered additional mechanical problems not long after being fired up recently. Given that emissions from the plant are implicated in some of the most pressing environmental and public health concerns facing our region, this latest period of downtime provides an opportunity to pause and consider what the future holds for this dinosaur of a facility.

The Boardman plant was authorized in 1975 and grandfathered in under several key provisions of the Clean Air Act, which means that it has never been required to install basic pollution-control technologies required at other power plants across the nation. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has subsequently admitted that its determination to exempt the Boardman plant from Clean Air Act protections was made in error. Emissions from the plant have since been tied to high levels of acid rain and fog in the Columbia gorge, degradation of Native American rock art, and visibility impairment at more than 10 national parks and protected areas. The plant is also one of the largest sources in the region of mercury, a particularly harmful neurotoxin.

Exposure to mercury in all its forms can cause significant health effects in humans and wildlife. Mercury is a persistent, bio-accumulative toxin that can remain active in the environment for more than 10,000 years. It endangers pregnant women, their fetuses, children, subsistence fishermen and recreational anglers by causing brain and nervous system damage in children and heart and immune system damage in adults. Under the Clinton administration, the EPA recognized these concerns and embarked on a plan to control mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, the largest non-natural source of mercury emissions in the country. In 2004, the EPA abruptly reversed regulatory course, calling into question scientific studies it previously relied upon and moving in the direction of a flexible market-based trading system for dealing with mercury.

States across the Midwest and Northeast have repudiated the EPA's inaptly named Clean Air Mercury Rule and have pushed for more aggressive mercury-reduction timelines. Bills requiring stringent pollution controls for mercury-emitting facilities have sailed through state legislatures with broad bipartisan support under strong leadership from governors and state agencies.

By contrast, Oregon appears poised to join states such as Mississippi and West Virginia in adopting the EPA's rule. Under Oregon's proposed plan, PGE will be allowed to continue emitting uncontrolled amounts of mercury until at least 2018. Mercury capture and control technology for all types of coal, including the varieties of western coal burned at the Boardman plant, is field-tested, cost-effective and already commercially available. We don't need to give PGE another decade simply to study these facts.

It is time for PGE -- and Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality -- to become part of the solution, rather than remain part of the problem.

Mark Riskedahl is executive director of the Northwest Environmental Defense Center. Public hearings on Oregon's Clean Air Mercury Rule will be held at 3 p.m. today at DEQ headquarters in Portland, at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Columbia Gorge Community College, in The Dalles, and at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Port of Morrow in Boardman.