Mercury protections needed in Virginia

Virginia's extensive coastline and natural waterways are among our most significant natural resources, providing jobs for farmers and watermen, and recreation for tourists and locals.

Unfortunately, many of those same lakes, streams and coasts are heavily polluted by the aging coal-fired power plants across our state. Like many Virginians, I live near the James River, one of the critical waterways in our state that is plagued by harmful toxics and pollutants like mercury.

Eight out of 10 of Virginia's river basins currently have fish-consumption advisories for dangerous levels of mercury. In 2010, a total of 65 fish-consumption advisories were issued in Virginia, many for mercury contamination. Yet, because only selected water bodies are monitored, this number does not reflect the full extent of chemical contamination of fish tissues in our state.

We may not spend time thinking about what kind of toxins might be in our dinner, but because of outdated federal environmental protections that allow polluters to dump toxins into our waterways, the fish on our plates might have serious health consequences.

Fortunately, there's hope.

I've been closely following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to enact critical health protections to curb harmful air pollution from dirty energy sources such as coal. Now, the EPA is on the verge of announcing new safeguards to ensure our food is no longer contaminated by mercury.

It's time for the president to get us across the finish line on mercury pollution and I am confident he will.

The problem has been clear from the get-go: Coal makes us sick. The pollution from burning coal causes a host of serious health problems, especially for children and seniors — problems such as asthma, respiratory illness, cancer, neurological problems and heart disease.

Mercury is one of the worst of the pollutants coal produces. Mercury makes its way from coal-fired power plants into the human body via contaminated fish, and it is a potent neurotoxin.

Mercury exposure puts pregnant women and their babies at risk for learning disabilities, developmental disorders and lower IQs. According to the EPA, at least one in 12 — and possibly as many as 1 in 6 — American women of childbearing age have enough mercury in their bodies to put their babies at risk.

Yet our power plants are currently allowed to spew mercury pollution without national limits. Dirty coal-fired power plants are the No. 1 source of mercury in the U.S., emitting more than 130,000 pounds of toxic mercury pollution in 2009 alone.

Unfortunately, here in Virginia, we have some old, polluting coal-fired power plants that dump life-threatening mercury pollution into our air on a daily basis. In fact, Virginia is the 23rd-worst mercury-polluted state in the nation, according to Environment America.

Our state's attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, has signed a letter calling on the EPA to allow polluters to continue dumping mercury into our water. By choosing to stand with polluters, not the Virginians he is supposed to represent, Cuccinelli is endangering our families.

We need federal mercury protections such as those that EPA proposed in March of this year, which would reduce mercury in our air and water by more than 90 percent.

Clean air safeguards could prevent 17,000 premature deaths, 11,000 heart attacks and more than 12,000 hospital and emergency room visits each year. More than 800,000 Americans have already demonstrated their support for these mercury protections.

If any more encouragement is needed to clean up mercury, let's consider the economic benefits.

The new EPA protections would reduce health-care costs for working families and taxpayers by preventing illnesses caused by toxic pollution. Mercury protections would also create new, good jobs — an estimated 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 permanent utility jobs — for workers installing and operating pollution-control equipment on power plants.

Reining in toxic mercury emissions would also speed the transition to clean energy that can put Virginia back to work. By replacing dirty coal plants with investments in clean energy, we can create thousands of good jobs here in our state.

To accomplish this, we need the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the president to rein in toxic mercury pollution with strong federal protections. For all our sakes, I hope it happens soon.