Mercury Contamination Poisoning Louisiana Anglers
Louisiana Sportsman Magazine investigates the presence of Mercury found in some Louisiana bodies of water and the effects this will have on Louisiana anglers. This story may be printed for FREE in any print publication. The tagline must be printed along with the story.
(PRWEB) December 2, 2004 -- Mercury contamination has become a major battle
cry nationwide for environmental groups. With some of the highest mercury
emissions in the U.S., Louisiana is at the forefront of this controversy.
Industry giants, the chlorine-making plants and coal-fired power plants,
contend that their mercury releases are within the legal limits, and are low
enough not to affect public health.
National environmental groups such
as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council dispute this,
claiming there is evidence that the chlor-alkali plants are underreporting the
amount of mercury they are releasing into the environment. They also claim that
the mercury released from these plants is raising the concentrations in our
waterways to dangerous levels.
“There have been significant discharges of
mercury over the last 50 years, and that’s the mercury that’s in the soil,” says
Barry Kohl, geologist at Tulane University and chair of the New Orleans Audubon
council.
Among the biggest offenders in amount of mercury released into
the air are Louisiana’s two Pioneer America chlor-alkali plants, one in Lake
Charles and one in St. Gabriel.
Only nine such plants that use mercury in
their chlorine-making process are still operating in the U.S. The rest have
switched to a much cleaner process that does not use mercury.
Most of the
chlor-alkali plants like the ones still operating in Louisiana were closed
down.
“Two plants in Alabama, one in North Carolina and one in Texas have
been closed down and are now superfund sites,” Kohl said.
In Louisiana,
the Pioneer America chlor-alkali plants have been given a free ride.
Louisiana’s two plants report discharging two tons of mercury into the
air every year. They could be releasing much more according to an article
published by The Washington Post last June.
“Each year (chlor-alkali)
plants buy massive amounts of mercury — in 2002 it totaled more than 100 tons —
to replace the amount they lose in production,” stated the article.
That
would leave over 20 tons of mercury unaccounted for in the Louisiana plants in
just one year.
“Over 50 percent of the mercury from these plants falls
within a 10- to 20-mile radius of the plant. The rest drifts with the wind,”
says Kohl, who also holds conservation chair of the Sierra Club in New Orleans.
Kohl says mercury emissions from these plants are responsible for
poisoning 29 Louisiana waterways, including fishing hotspots like the
Atchafalaya Basin.
This is a concern for everybody who enjoys fishing,
and eating their catch, because once the mercury gets into the water, it can
take hundreds of years to get out.
Kohl said that most of the other
chlor-alkali plants in the U.S. have converted to the diaphragm process, which
does not use mercury at all and is much cleaner. But Louisiana has not required
its plants to do this.
Coal-fired power plants are another major source
of mercury pollution, both nationally and statewide. Louisiana has four such
power plants, the biggest being Big Cajun 2 in Pointe Coupee. Together they emit
900 pounds of mercury into the air each year.
Mercury emissions from
these plants are currently completely unregulated by the state. Environmental
groups are urging federal decision-makers to require power plants to reduce
their mercury pollution by 90 percent, and ultimately move away from polluting
sources of power altogether.
Gas-pressure meters are another source of
mercury that could be getting into Louisiana’s waterways. These meters, used to
measure the amount of gas running through pipelines, have about 8 pounds of
mercury each. Some of these meters have been in the field since the early
1900s.
There are an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 meters in Louisiana. At
many of these sites, the mercury has leaked into the ground underneath the
meters.
The DEQ has known about possible contamination issues with the
meters since 1992, when extremely high mercury levels in fish in the Ouachita
River occurred suspiciously close to 8,000 meters in the nearby Monroe gas
field.
State officials at that time issued warnings to residents of
Louisiana and Arkansas in areas around the Ouachita to drastically limit their
consumption of fish from the river.
Since that discovery 12 years ago,
the Department of Environmental Quality has issued only a voluntary clean-up of
these sites by the gas companies.
El Paso Gas, a company that owns many
of the gas-transmission pipelines in the state, is currently working with DEQ to
clean up their sites. Other gas companies have not followed suit.
Gov.
Kathleen Blanco’s administration has begun a mercury initiative that has opened
the door for an investigation into the mercury pollution problem. By the
beginning of 2005, they hope to present a mercury action plan.
“The fact
they’re having meetings open to the public, which has never been done before …
because of that I think this administration is really trying to change things,”
said Kohl.
By: Ann Taylor, Louisiana Sportsman Magazine
Louisiana
Sportsman Magazine brings the outdoors indoors by providing readers with the
most up-to-the-minute hunting and fishing news found anywhere across the state.
Subscribe today: 800-538-4355.
# # #
Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2004/12/prweb184344.htm