Website for Nathan Moore, Physics, Winona State University
I wrote this letter in response to the revision of the Mercury and Air Toxics standards. https://www.winonadailynews.com/opinion/columnists/nathan-moore-keeping-pollutants-out-of-our-water/article_f81a67cb-ac94-5d83-981d-acf10efa9922.html Winona Daily News, March 2019
I recently read about how New York is preparing for future storm surge. Historically, there were vast reefs of oyster shells and oysters around New York Harbor. These reefs decreased the height of incoming storm surge, which decreased the destruction associated with hurricanes and large storms.
Oysters were overfished and contaminated beyond human consumption about 100 years ago, and in the time since, the reefs have ceased to be functional in preventing storm surge. At present, motivated in part by “Superstorm Sandy,” there is a large effort to reintroduce oysters around the bay. You can read about it by googling the “Billion Oyster Project.”
After hearing about this, I wondered if you could fish and eat oysters in New York? Nope. The harbor is contaminated beyond belief with heavy metals, PCBs and other chemicals that will induce cancer. These chemicals, released from industrial discharge and coal burning, are buried in the mud and oysters are filter feeders. Like zebra mussels in the Mississippi River, they clean the water and concentrate all of the nasty chemicals you don’t want to eat.
I wondered further … can you eat the fish that swim in the rivers around New York? Again, a hard no. Essentially every littoral body of water around New York is so contaminated that women and children should never eat the fish they catch. Ever! Read the details for yourself online at https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/outdoors/fish/health_advisories/regional/new_york_city.htm
In college, I once went tubing with some friends on the Ohio River, just north of Pittsburgh. We had a fun day, tubing in the shadows of old steel mills, but on the drive home I realized we all smelled like gasoline, and not from the boat motor. How lucky we are in Minnesota to live in an area that doesn’t have 100 years of industrial chemical production. Aside from a few areas of the Mississippi River in the Twin Cities, our industries flourished after people realized that you can’t just dump your chemical waste in the river.
How is this still relevant today? At present, the EPA is receiving comments on whether to revoke the mercury and air toxics standards for coal burning power plants. These standards, set up by George W. Bush, dramatically reduce the amount of mercury and other heavy metals that are emitted from coal burning power plants.
Mercury is scavenged from coal emissions in the atmosphere by rain and accumulates in lake and stream food chains. It isn’t hyperbole to say that coal-burning power plants to our west are the reason your kids shouldn’t have brown trout from Gilmore Creek more than once a week https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/fish/eating/sitespecific.html.
The rationale for rescinding these regulations is that they’ll cost too much to implement. In Minnesota, the associated pollution control equipment was installed about three years ago. Did you notice the increase in your electric bill? I didn’t.
The current administration is removing the MATS standards to make coal-fired electricity more “competitive.”
Are you angry? Do something! Public comments are taken into account in rule-making decisions like these. You can submit a comment (which will matter) online, here: http://bit.ly/epa_comment.
Note, the comment period is obviously over. Here is the EPS’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards page, https://www.epa.gov/mats