N.Y. Threatens to Sue Utilities in Midwest, South

ALBANY, N.Y. —  New York’s attorney general threatened Wednesday to sue coal-fired power plants in the Midwest and South if they don’t stop spewing pollution that causes acid rain and smog in the Northeast.

“Air pollution simply knows no boundaries,” Eliot Spitzer said.

Also, environmental groups released a report saying that rain contaminated with mercury from coal-fired electric plants is fouling Midwest lakes and rivers.

Mercury is showing up in Chicago rainfall at levels 42 times greater than federal standards have considered safe, according to Andrew Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation. Mercury levels in rain are even higher in Detroit and Duluth, Minn., he said.

The New York lawsuits would be the first by a state attorney general against private companies in another state over pollution, Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp said.

Surrounded by images of belching smokestacks and acid-rain devastated forests, Spitzer said he would seek “enormous” damages from 17 plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia if they do not reach an agreement with the state in two months.

Spitzer said the plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia failed to upgrade equipment that cleans smokestack emissions when they made other big investments in the plants, a requirement under the act.

Preliminary findings of a six-month EPA study suggested a pattern of such violations by operators of many of the country’s biggest and dirtiest coal-burning plants, Clinton administration officials said in July.

The increased acid rain problems in the Northeast over the last 20 years have been linked to sulfates and nitrates, which are products of coal-fired power plants. Recent studies by the EPA and the Department of Energy indicate that 85% to 90% of the sulfates over the mid-Atlantic and New England states originate in Midwestern power plant emissions.

The mercury contamination report was released Tuesday by groups including the Environmental Law and Policy Center and the Sierra Club. The data were collected from government and university studies with the help of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Buchsbaum said.

“Unfortunately, the largest contributor to the problem, the electric utility industry, continues to get a free ride on its mercury pollution,” Peter Morman said of the law and policy center. “While other sources are reducing emissions, no such requirements exist for coal-fired power plants.”

Morman said mercury pollution by Midwestern utilities probably will increase because deregulation will prompt them to generate higher levels of electricity.

Buchsbaum said the plants should cut their mercury emissions, with an eye toward eliminating them, by turning to cleaner energy sources, such as natural gas.

Scott Miller, air quality engineer for Commonwealth Edison in Chicago, said that the utility’s seven coal-fired plants emitted 1,700 pounds of mercury in 1998--an amount that has been steady for several years.

Miller said ComEd is cooperating with the EPA studies. He said the utility has no plans to convert its coal plants to gas.

A naturally occurring metal, mercury accumulates in fish and becomes more concentrated as it moves up the food chain. In humans, the neurotoxin can slow fetal and child development and cause brain damage.