To commemorate Mother's Day this year, scores of women and children (along with the actor who played the voice of "Nemo," the animated clownfish) converged upon the White House yesterday to urge President Bush to stop stalling on environmental cleanups and protect them from dangerous mercury emissions.
The rally, organized by Clear the Air, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting stronger pollution controls, gained the women an audience with key administration advisors on environmental policy. John Graham, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and James Connaughton, chair of the Office of Environmental Quality for the President, met late yesterday with several of the mothers and with Angela Ledford, director of Clear the Air.
But Ledford said the meeting accomplished little in the way of convincing the administration to back away from its proposal to allow high-polluting power plants to purchase "credits" from cleaner ones -- a policy that would substantially delay the previous administration's plans for reducing mercury emissions.
"Sadly, the White House did not seem open to even doing the research to see if their preferred proposal is more effective than simply requiring every plant to meet a 90 percent [reduction of emissions] standard by a date certain," she said. "They seem to think that if they talk enough about how concerned they are about mercury's toxic effects... that that should be enough."
Clear the Air joins dozens of environmental groups, prominent scientists and researchers in its criticism of the Bush Administration's efforts to roll back clean air protections in favor of policies that primarily benefit the energy industry. President Bush has been repeatedly criticized for ignoring sound science and available technologies, instead placing the benefits to industry above the health of women and children.
High levels of mercury, emitted from coal-fired power plants, are making their way into the food supply through tainted fish, such as tuna, large-mouth bass, swordfish, catfish and some shellfish and trout.
Pregnant women and children are especially vulnerable to the harmful effects of mercury, which is known to cause learning and developmental disorders. Studies show one in six American women of childbearing age have blood levels of mercury that are unsafe for the developing fetus.[1]
The Clean Air Act requires the federal government to enforce maximum achievable reductions in mercury and other air pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants. When the administration failed to meet the December 2002 deadline for issuing final standards on mercury, environmental groups sued. Last week, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt agreed to extend the deadline for public comments on the administration's "cap and trade" mercury proposal.
Ledford said studies show current technologies would be available to reduce mercury emissions at power plants by as much as 90 percent by 2010. However, the administration's proposal, according to its own modeling, would take until 2025 to reach a lower, 70 percent reduction.
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SOURCES:
[1] Clear the Air.
