BANGOR (AP) – Maine’s largest environmental group has sued the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that regulators are not meeting their duty to reduce mercury pollution and putting wildlife and human health at risk.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine, based in Augusta, joined two national groups, the Izaak Walton League of America and the National Wildlife Federation, to file a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit alleges that the EPA’s recent proposal to clean up mercury pollution does not meet a 1990 requirement of the federal Clean Air Act, which called for the best available technology to control mercury emissions at stationary sources by the end of 2002.

The EPA missed the deadline, the plaintiffs argue, and the proposed rule they introduced last year does not meet the standard of the best available technology.

The EPA’s proposed mercury rule calls for either a new emissions trading program to begin in 2018, or a requirement that the facilities identified as sources of mercury pollution install the best pollution control technology by 2007, in hopes of reducing mercury emissions by 14 tons nationwide.

Scientific research indicates that mercury is a neurotoxin, which can interfere with a child’s development if the mother is exposed to sufficient amounts during pregnancy. Many states, including Maine, have placed consumption advisories on some fish species to limit people’s exposure to mercury.

“It’s fundamentally different from other pollutants. It can’t break down. Mercury is cumulative,” said John Hinck, the attorney representing the state council. “The pollution reductions have to be as dramatic as they can be.”

EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt recently defended the proposed mercury rule in congressional testimony. Drastic mercury reductions aren’t possible immediately because the best new pollution control technology isn’t expected to be commercially available until 2010, he had said.

The lawsuit’s plaintiffs argue that EPA scientists two years ago concluded that mercury reductions of 90 percent are possible using existing technologies.

The Maine Attorney General’s Office has long raised concerns about “the EPA’s lack of approach toward mercury,” spokesman Chuck Dow said Wednesday.

“Attorney General Rowe expects, within the next couple days, to join other attorneys general in filing comments on the EPA’s proposed rule, on the grounds that they’re inconsistent with the Clean Air Act,” Dow said.

The Natural Resources Council of Maine and its partners decided to take the issue to court shortly after the rule was proposed in December. Until December, environmentalists had believed that a rule meeting the Clean Air Act requirements was forthcoming, Hinck said.

“The assumption was that the EPA was proceeding in good faith,” he said.

AP-ES-04-29-04 0219EDT