EPA Ruling Allows Mercury Emissions from Cement Manufacturers
Bad news if you live near or downwind of an existing cement manufacturing plant.
(That would be many folks in the Northeast, north-Midwest, north Texas, north and east of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. Here’s an interactive map showing the locations of cement kilns in the U.S.)
The EPA denied two court orders to set restrictions on mercury emissions from cement kilns, and instead ruled that only plants built after December 2005 will have to limit and measure emissions.
Older cement kilns get EPA pass on mercury
EPA Fails to Limit Toxic Mercury Pollution from Cement Kilns
Mercury is a known potent neurotoxin. The EPA estimates 1 in 6 women of childbearing age have unsafe blood mercury levels. Also, autism rates have been found to be significantly higher in areas with higher mercury emissions.
Industry lobbying seems to have paid off:
Parts of the decision, signed late Friday by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, closely follow industry requests to the agency. Industry officials also met with White House staffers Nov. 30 to discuss the pending decision, and EPA staffers phoned in to the meeting, records show.
1997 EPA data suggests that that cement kilns account for less than five percent of all mercury emissions (created when mercury is released from limestone when heated during the manufacture of cement). However, it seems as though cement manufacturers may have been drastically understating their emission estimates:
Although federal law requires cement plants to report their mercury emissions, it does not require those reports to be based on actual measurements. Where kilns have tested their emissions, the data has shown their earlier “reporting” to be gross understatements of actual emissions. For example, a plant located in Alpena, Michigan, routinely reported emissions of approximately 50 pounds of mercury per year. But when the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality required the cement plant to test their actual stack emissions, it turned out the kiln was really emitting 581 pounds of mercury. A similar instance of underreporting has been uncovered at a cement plant in Oregon, which is the nation’s third worst mercury polluter.
“If reporting from the rest of the cement industry is as inaccurate as the reporting from Alpena, this industry could be putting out between 25 and 50 tons of mercury every year,” said Jane Williams, Chair of Sierra Club’s Air Toxics Task Force. “That would put cement kilns in the same category as coal-fired power plants, which have long been recognized as the worst culprit for mercury contamination.”
Cement manufacturers argue that it would be too costly and ineffective to implement measures to restrict mercury emissions, but environmental groups disagree:
EPA environmental engineer Keith Barnett, of the agency’s air-quality planning and standards office in North Carolina, said it would cost a cement manufacturer “$1.5 million per year per kiln for a wet scrubber” that might reduce emissions by 42%, which he said was not a large enough reduction to justify the cost.
Marti Sinclair of the Sierra Club said $1.5 million would be a small price to protect the public, noting that one of the nation’s leading cement producers had reported revenue of $1.1 billion last year and had already installed such technology in Switzerland, where it was required.
I have to side with the latter group. $1.5M per kiln seems like a small price to pay for reducing mercury emissions by nearly half.
More background on the issue is available here.
If the EPA’s decision strikes you as a poor one, write your Congresspersons and ask for them to push for a review of the decision.
