By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

Mercury has been linked to serious health problems: Brain damage and developmentally impaired children among them.

Scientists say it leads to reproductive failure in wildlife, especially fish-eating species like osprey, loons and otters.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency says mercury found in the blood of one in six pregnant American women could damage the brain of a developing infant; 630,000 infants annually are at risk of lowered intelligence and learning problems.

Yet the EPA in December 2003 veered from actions that would have led to regulations aimed at controlling mercury discharges.

Instead, the agency embraced a regulatory scheme written in part by coal and utility industry lobbyists. That plan would roll back Clean Air Act provisions to allow seven times more mercury pollution than existing laws allow.

Mainers want change

Brownie Carson and a lot of like-minded people want to do something about that.

Carson, executive director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, flies to Washington today to deliver more than 5,000 letters and notes from Mainers who want the EPA to do its job and control mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants. More than 650,000 other people have made similar demands.

It’s part of a campaign organized by activists and groups like the Natural Resources Council of Maine. Today’s trip by Carson to Washington will be preceded by a press conference that will feature Carson; Lani Graham, recently acting director of Maine’s Bureau of Health; Jenny Mayher, a child advocate and mother of two; and Wing Goodale, a Biodiversity Research Institute researcher who specializes in the impact of mercury on living things.

Maine is downwind from Midwest power plants that burn mercury-producing coal. The Baldacci administration and Maine’s congressional delegation have called for strict controls on mercury pollution from power plants.

“We’re at the end of the nation’s tailpipe,” said Matt Prindiville, the council’s outreach coordinator on toxic and federal issues.

“Our kids are the ones who are suffering here,” he added.

Carrot, stick

Carson is hoping the letters he’ll carry to Washington will help sway the EPA to regulate mercury using maximum achievable control technology standards that could reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2008, according to the council.

That’s the carrot.

The stick: The council has also joined with the National Wildlife Federation and the Izaak Walton League to sue the EPA for proposing a mercury standard that fails to meet Clean Air Act requirements.

The EPA’s inspector general released an investigative report last week showing that Bush administration appointees ordered EPA staff members to violate agency protocol and existing law by devising a rule that violates the Clean Air Act to mimic Bush’s goals, the council says.

Prindiville said Carson is also hoping to encourage Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to join in the mercury reduction effort.

Both are Republicans, and he said that if the EPA continues on its present course, congressional action will be needed to restore Clean Air Act principles.

Collins in particular could be helpful, he said, since she chairs the Senate’s Committee on Government Affairs. That’s the panel that could call for hearings on the EPA’s commitment to protecting the nation’s environment.

Costs related to mercury abatement shouldn’t be a significant factor. The National Wildlife Federation conducted a study that shows it would cost the average Maine customer an extra 4 cents on the monthly electric bill if technology was installed at dirty old coal plants to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent.