Country to Country Lawsuits Over Pollution?
There was a small, interesting article my husband brought home from Friday’s Free Press, page 5B. Scott Edwards the legal director of Waterkeeper Alliance (God bless em) filed charges in an Ontario court against none other than DTE Energy for mercury and other harmful deposits into the St. Clair River. There is enough to upset the fish evidently. The Belle River and St. Clair coalburners are to blame. Canadian law permits private citizens to come up with a case against a company for any kind of breaches to Canada’s laws. Upsetting the fish habitat is considered a violation of Canada’s Fisheries Act. Edwards is hoping that DTE installs mercury control technologies in those plants. That would be the scrubbers DTE plans on installing in its coalburners throughout Michigan.
But DTE countered that is meets all state and federal EPA regulations. It tried to make a case that Ontario doesn’t have any specific laws relative to mercury emissions despite the many coal burners. I assumed that is why Edwards is using the more specific Fisheries Act. So is DTE saying Ontario has a lot of nerve complaining about mercury hurting the fish when they have no mercury laws of their own? This just might be the trigger Ontario needs to establish a new mercury emissions law. Then what? That will be interesting if it happens. Now we have one country suing another over pollution. And that sets a precedent. Since the U.S. contributes 25% of our world’s entire pollution, it could just open Pandora’s pollution box for the U.S.
As far as DTE’s claims that it is in compliance with state and federal EPA laws well let’s just say the latest Bush plan to cut $500 million from the EPA’s budget will render nothing more than a joke of an agency that almost completely relies on the goodwill of big energy and every other polluter to take care of things in their own backyard. Never going to happen. Stephen Johnson, the head of the EPA doesn’t seem to get it. His remark that “Our air, water and land are cleaner than they were a generation ago and with this budget that progress will continue” shows he is out of touch with the environmental evolution taking place. I think he expects to creep along at the same snail pace to reluctantly clean up our mess as before. But our clean water is at risk from cuts also.
There is a proposed $400 million cut to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. It provides low interest loans to pay for upgrades to sewage treatment plants that federal studies show will need $300 billion over the course of the next 20 years. Local communities may not get the needed help to upgrade their infrastructures to meet stricter clean water standards.
Meeting EPA standards takes on a whole new meaning in light of these recent proposals. The other thing DTE’s spokesman John Austerberry downplayed was that the mercury released after the scrubbers are in place is minimal—”the equivalent of filling the Houston Astrodome with ping-pong balls and painting seven of them silver” (FreePress). Much like a disease lottery, who wants one of those silver ping-pong balls in their back yard? Mercury is small but mighty. Like I explained in another blog about mercury, it turns into methyl-mercury when it lands in water, is eaten by algae, and comes back out a whole new toxin. And it builds up in living organisms. Ingest it, and it stays. Eat the critters that eat the mercury and more of it builds up and stays. Once it’s there it can do damage to our nervous system as well as all the innocent creatures along our shores and in our lakes that are under our watch.
We have groups of parents across the country screaming about minute amounts of mercury in vaccinations as suspect for all types of childhood maladies including autism. So maybe we should stop being so glib about a little bit of mercury here, a little bit of mercury there. DTE should quit touting their plan for installing scrubbers that should have been there all along and move to the gasification process where just about all emissions are trapped. It isn’t like they don’t have the money, especially after last months heating bills. What do you think?