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Duluth, Minn. — Iron ore contains small amounts of mercury. When the ore is heated to make taconite, some of the mercury escapes into the air. As it falls back to earth, it can land in lakes and streams, where it accumulates in fish. People who eat the fish can suffer damage to the nervous system.
The Minnesota Health Department warns pregnant women and young children not to eat too much fish.
The National Wildlife Federation's Jane Reyer worries people are ignoring the warnings.
"If children are only supposed to eat one meal per month of walleye," she says, "there have to be a lot of Minnesota children who eat more walleye than that!"
Reyer's group wants the EPA to limit mercury emissions in its new rules for taconite plants.
Mercury isn't covered in the rules at the moment. That's because the EPA is taking a pragmatic approach to cutting down on industrial pollution.
The agency takes a look at an entire industry - such as taconite processing - and figures out which plants are most successful at reducing pollution. Then it requires all the plants to achieve the same reductions.
The EPA says this approach works better than a system they tried twenty years ago that required complex calculations of risk.
But critics say there's a major flaw. This approach only requires action for the chemicals that are currently being controlled by the best plants. The EPA doesn't ask the industry to develop new technologies, or to find ways to go after the pollutants they aren't already controlling. And right now, there's no technology available to capture mercury from the smokestacks of taconite plants.
Jane Reyer says the EPA should impose a cap on mercury anyway.
"That would be a huge incentive for the industry to develop those controls, or at least to do everything it could," she says.
Reyer says if the taconite companies try but don't succeed in finding ways to control mercury right away, the EPA could cut them some slack.
Taconite companies point out they only put out about half the mercury put out by coal-fired power plants. And they also argue mercury falling from the sky in Minnesota comes from all over the world.
Dave Skolasinski is environmental manager for Cleveland Cliffs, which operates several taconite plants. He says the expense of developing new equipment to control the tiny amount of mercury from taconite plants would bring very little environmental benefit.
He says of all the mercury polluting Minnesota waters, about 90% comes from outside the state.
"So, severely impacting the industry by requiring very stringent requirements for mercury removal would really have virtually no effect," he says.
Skolasinski says taconite companies expect they'll eventually be able to use controls developed by utility companies, which are doing a lot more research.
Even without having to control mercury, Skolasinski says the EPA's rule will require a big investment for very small improvements in air quality.
Steve Fruh oversees metals contaminants in the EPA's air quality office. He says no industry likes to have new rules imposed, but the taconite industry will adapt.
"Yes, there is some cost," he says. He compares it to the extra cost of putting airbags in cars. "It saves peoples' lives, and we do it because it serves society. It has a greater benefit."
The EPA will issue its new rule on air pollution from taconite plants in August. Later this year the agency will do the same for power plants. The EPA says it intends to re-examine the control of emissions not covered now, but that won't happen for eight more years.
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