Comments and Testimonies

June 29, 2004

Docket I.D. No. OAR-2002-0056
Clean Air Council Comments to
EPA Mercury Budget Trading Program SNPR
of March 16, 2004, at 69 FR 12398

Clean Air Council (the Council) is a non-profit environmental corporation organized and existing under the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Council is dedicated to protecting everyone's right to breathe clean air.

On February 25, 2004, the Council presented testimony into the record regarding EPA's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 69 FR 4651, a proposed NESHAP or alternatively, proposed Standard of Performance for Electric Utility Steam Generating Units (Proposed Utility Mercury Reductions Rule). In that testimony, the Council addressed the Agency's indication in the NPR that emissions trading of mercury would be the primary mechanism for achieving emissions reductions in two of the three scenarios presented therein. Clean Air Council expressed in its testimony an unequivocal opposition to the concept of emissions trading for any hazardous air pollutant and in particular for the trading of mercury.

On March 16, 2004, EPA published a Supplemental Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, providing the model budget trading program and allocations to sources under the proposed NESHAP or Standard of Performance. The SNPR provides the methodology for states to implement the program, either through adoption of EPA's rule or by promulgation of their own, comparable rule. It confirms the nationwide scope of the trading program.

EPA's assurances of a mandatory cap, automatic penalties for non-compliance, and monitoring and reporting requirements offer little comfort. Clean Air Council's primary concern--the inappropriateness of trading hazardous air pollutants that will undoubtedly create "hot spots" of high mercury emissions in Pennsylvania and other states-remains. Despite industry claims to the contrary, significant amounts of mercury deposition in the U.S., particularly in the East, comes from U.S. power plants. EPA's own modeling for the 1998 Final Report to Congress demonstrates that local and regional power plants are responsible for very high percentages of mercury deposition at a given location, confirming that communities in the shadows of power plants, and even those a considerable distance downwind feel the significant impact of deposition. Given these facts, hot spots are inevitable under this trading program.

The capability of control technologies to provide deep reductions currently exists. To deny certain communities the benefit of those reductions and subject
them to dangerous levels of this neurotoxin for the foreseeable future for the claimed purpose of economic efficiency is completely irresponsible and reprehensible. Furthermore, the Council continues to maintain that the Clean Air Act simply does not permit the trading of section 112 pollutants.

Clean Air Council's position regarding the inadequate nature of overall reductions, both by percentage and timing, also remains unchanged. The Council hereby incorporates by reference its February 25, 2004 testimony relevant to the Utility Mercury Reduction Rule and attaches a copy of the same for the Agency's convenience. Failure to address other particulars of the SNPR should not be deemed assent to EPA's design thereof.

Very truly yours,

Michael Fiorentino, Esq.
Air Program Manager
Joseph Otis Minott, Esq.
Executive Director