New Jersey Tough Mercury Rule

New Jersey Tough Mercury Rule



   
April 2007 - In a unanimous 
decision, the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New 
Jersey has affirmed the New Jersey Department of Environmental 
Protection's regulations to protect people from the impacts of 
mercury emissions from iron and steel melters. 
The decision, released by the court April 13, allows the state 
to move forward with its efforts to address four of the 
largest in-state sources of mercury - iron and steel melters, 
coal-burning power plants, municipal solid waste incinerators, 
and medical waste incinerators. 
On November 4, 2004, the New Jersey Department of 
Environmental Protection, DEP, issued the first regulations 
ever to control mercury emissions from iron and steel melters. 
An operator monitors the pouring of molten steel at 3,000 
degrees Fahrenheit into billets that will be reheated and 
rolled into concrete reinforcing bars. 
The only prior controls on mercury emissions were in the 
melters' federal operating permits, which are specific to each 
facility and widely different. None of the iron and steel 
facilities in New Jersey is currently covered by federal 
regulation. 
The Steel Manufacturers Association, a national association 
representing iron and steel melters, and Gerdau Ameristeel, of 
Raritan, the owner of two New Jersey facilities, challenged 
the regulations. They claimed that the requirements were too 
stringent, but the court disagreed, finding that the state had 
acted well within its "broad authority to issue health-based 
regulations." 
Iron and steel melters, the largest New Jersey-based source of 
mercury emissions, emit an estimated 1,000 pounds of mercury 
into New Jersey's environment every year. 
State Attorney General Stuart Rabner said, "This decision 
confirms the state's authority to protect the health of our 
citizenvironment news by enacting tough rules to reduce
 dangerous mercury 
pollution." 
New Jersey Attorney General Stuart Rabner 
The court decision boosts the state's efforts to take mercury 
out of the environment by regulating all four of the largest 
sources. 
The DEP estimates the November 2004 regulations will achieve 
an estimated 85 percent reduction of overall mercury emissions 
in New Jersey by requiring:
  75 percent reductions of mercury emissions from the state's 
  six iron and steel melters by 2009.   90 percent reductions
 of mercury emissions from the state's 
  10 coal-fired power plants by 2007, or by 2012 if the plants 
  also take action to reduce their emissions of sulfur 
  dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.   The coal-fired
 Carneys Point power plant in New Jersey 
  
  Reductions of mercury emissions from the state's five 
  municipal solid waste incinerators of 95 percent below their 
  1990 levels by the year 2011.   Stringent emission rate limits
 for the three medical waste 
  incinerators operating the state. 
In addition to the state regulations, the New Jersey attorney 
general filed suit on behalf of the state last year in federal 
appeals court challenging a rule issued by the U.S. 
Environmental Protection Agency that removed power plants from 
the list of pollution sources subject to mercury pollution 
controls under the federal Clean Air Act. 
New Jersey is leading a coalition of 16 states that is 
challenging the federal mercury rule. The U.S. EPA rule set up 
a cap-and-trade plan to address mercury from power plants that 
contained much weaker requirements than New Jersey's own 
rules. 
DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson said. "Cap and trade does not 
work for contaminants such as mercury, which can have serious 
local health impacts." 
Exposure to the most toxic form of mercury comes primarily 
from eating contaminated fish and shellfish. However, fish 
advisories, which have been adopted by EPA, are not an 
adequate substitute for appropriate regulation of mercury 
emissions under the Clean Air Act, which are intended to 
prevent mercury from entering the air and being deposited in 
lakes, rivers and streams where it enters the bodies of fish. 
In New Jersey has mercury consumption advisories for at least 
one species of fish in almost every body of water in the 
state. 
Scientists estimate up to 600,000 U.S. children are born each 
year with neurological problems leading to poor school 
performance because of mercury exposure while in the womb. 

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