A bill aimed at reducing mercury emissions from Public Service of New Hampshire power plants is making its way through a New Hampshire Senate Committee.
The bill gets a hearing on Tuesday, and would mandate emission controls beginning in 2009.
But PSNH is fighting the measure, saying there's no economical way to reduce the toxic emissions.
New Hampshire Public Radio's David Darman has more.
The bill before lawmakers would expand the state's Clean Power Act, which became law in 2002.
The law requires power plants to significantly cut nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide.
It also mandated careful measure of carbon dioxide and mercury emissions.
Senator Carl Johnson is sponsoring the expansion of the law.
He says it's aimed at requiring specific, quantifiable cuts in the pollutants that till now have only been measured.
what the bill does is try to take a look at mercury and carbon dioxide and see if this is a time that we can settle on what those reductions might be over a period of time.
A new study by the Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine finds the mercury pollution problem may be more widespread than previously believed.
It found potentially harmful levels of the heavy metal in fish and land based songbirds in a wide area of southern New Hampshire.
In fact, the mercury concentrations in 10 of 13 fish species found in the Northeast exceeds EPA health standards.
The study points out that power plants and waste incinerators are partly to blame.
The senate bill expanding the Clean Power Act would require plants like PSNH's Merrimack plant in Bow and Schiller plant in Portsmouth to install additional pollution controls.
Jeff Underhill is with the state's Department of Environmental Services.
He says requiring pollution controls at those plants should slow down the accumulations of the toxic metal.
we do know that we've got some mercury emissions and all indications are that we can reduce the risk, the health risk in those areas by putting on some additional controls at these facilities.
Senator Johnson's bill would limit yearly mercury emissions from power plants and incinerators to fifty pounds starting in 2009.
That would require significant reductions at PSNH plants.
The Merrimack station alone produces about 120 pounds a year.
The state's Public Utility Commission does not know exactly what it would cost PSNH to outfit 2 coal burning plants.
Estimates range from about 7 million dollars to more than ten times that much.
Martin Murray is a spokesman for PSNH.
He says the cost estimates are shaky because the company doesn't know what it would need to do.
there is no proven technology today which can be applied to our plants for a known price and which will produce a known solution.
The company plans to run a pilot program this summer to test out a new technology for reducing emissions.
In the meantime, PSNH is facing a new legal challenge from the Conservation Law Foundation.
CLF has announced it intends to file suit to force the company to reduce toxic emissions coming from its power plant in Bow.
Brad Kuster is Staff Attorney at CLF.
He says the company has evaded controlling toxins because of lax federal oversight.
the epa has failed to issue the regulations required under the clean air act to control the mercury emissions of coal fired power plants . Those regulations are now more than two years overdue..
Environmentalists in the state are applauding both the CLF suit and the legislative push to expand the Clean Power Act.
And they're waiting for what the Environmental Protection Agency might do.
EPA is expected to issue new mercury emissions rules this week for power plants.
Those rules could institute a "cap and trade" system, an approach favored by President Bush.
Under "cap and trade", plants that pollute can buy credits from cleaner burning plants, instead of installing expensive pollution control equipment.
Many environmentalists oppose cap and trade for mercury.
They say the toxin needs to be controlled everywhere, because it poses such danger to human health.
Doug Bogen is the Program Director at Clean Water Action in Portsmouth.
you know when we've had a fish advisory for all these years its been an imminent health threat for all this time and mercury accumulates. it accumulates in the environment and it accumulates in our bodies and you know, it just can't continue on this way.
New federal rules could be in place long before the state's Clean Power Act could be broadened.
But state environmental officials say they think expanding Clean Power is still possible, even if federal officials institute a "cap and trade" system.
They say federal laws often leave room for states to apply more stringent standards.
That relationship could be tested soon, if new federal rules go into effect.
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