Bush's plan to manage mercury emissions meets with opposition from environmentalists

• The Bush administration this week will propose the first federal controls on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
• The new rule will abandon the Environmental Protection Agency's original tilt toward a remedy favored by most environmental groups in favor of a system of tradable pollution allowances that is more congenial to industry.
• The new E.P.A. rule is intended to cut emissions to 38 tons, a 21 percent reduction from 1999 levels, in 2010 and to as little as 15 tons, or about a 69 percent reduction, in 2018, according to the draft of the final rule sent to Bush administration budget officials this weekend for final vetting.
• Environmentalists and some state officials have argued that this approach will lead to so-called hot spots posing significant risks to local populations.
• The rule is certain to infuriate some environmental groups that have long called for stringent mercury regulation and argued that mercury was too great a health hazard to be an appropriate candidate for market-based regulation that, by its nature, results in uneven enforcement and protects some populations more than others.
• Much airborne mercury deposited in the United States originates abroad, and most of the mercury-laden fish consumed by Americans as fish sticks or fish fillets is imported.
• Accompanying the rule will be a document reversing the agency's formal conclusion of December 2000 that it was "appropriate and necessary" to require utilities to scrub as much mercury as possible from coal-fired power plants.
• The agency maintains that controls mandated under this Clean Air Interstate Rule will have the "co-benefit" of reducing mercury emissions to the levels set for 2010.
• Even though large reductions in mercury emissions from municipal and medical waste incinerators and chemical factories have been achieved over the past decade, at least 44 states have issued advisories calling for limited consumption of fish from mercury-contaminated streams.