Deal calls for rapid mercury reduction

"Features"

04/28/2006

Minnesota’s tougher standards exceed federal requirements

BY DENNIS LIEN
Pioneer Press

Mercury emissions from Minnesota’s three largest coal-fired power plants would be cut by 90 percent over the next eight years under a compromise unveiled Thursday at the state Capitol.

The deal, hailed as one of the most ambitious in the nation but still needing legislative approval, would force those plants to cut emissions more aggressively and faster than a federal timetable calling for a 70 percent mercury reduction by 2018.

The bipartisan product, reached by Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration, lawmakers and utility, business and environmental interests, also appears to end a fractious debate over how quickly Minnesota should cut emissions of mercury, a potent neurotoxin that is ubiquitous in state waters and has prompted widespread fish-consumption advisories.

“The goal the federal government has set is too low and too slow,” Pawlenty said at a news conference.

It’s unclear how much the tougher standards would affect utility bills.

Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, cited a study showing an increase of 55 cents to $1.55 per power bill, but cautioned that it covered a much more sweeping plan. Any Minnesota plan would have to be approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, whose job it is to protect ratepayers.

Mike Robertson, environmental policy consultant for the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, said it’s difficult to predict rate increases because the utilities don’t yet know what it will cost them to meet the requirement.

The agreement affects Xcel Energy’s Sherco power plant in Becker, its Allen S. King plant in Oak Park Heights and Minnesota Power’s Clay Boswell plant near Grand Rapids. Mercury-control technologies would be phased in at different units of the three plants by 2015, reducing annual mercury emissions by nearly 1,200 pounds, or about a third of the state’s overall mercury output.

It doesn’t address emissions from smaller power plants or other mercury sources, such as taconite plants, that collectively emit about 2,000 pounds a year. The smaller power plants would abide by the weaker, slower federal requirements.

The Minnesota House is expected to take up the issue first, perhaps as early as Monday. The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, and Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, predicted passage.

“This is very likely the strongest mercury-reduction bill in the country,’’ said Brian Pasko, legislative coordinator for the North Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. “It’s vague and, at times, complex. But at the end of the day, we achieve substantial reductions from six of our largest coal-plant units.’’

In recent years, several states have adopted or are considering mercury-reduction strategies that are more aggressive than the federal requirements. Wisconsin, for example, adopted a rule in 2004 requiring a 40 percent reduction by 2010 and a 75 percent reduction by 2015.

Rick Evans, Xcel’s director of Minnesota government affairs, called the agreement a good way to proceed.

“Mercury reduction is something we are going to need to do for the environment’s benefit and, frankly, because government wants us to do it,’’ he said.

Mercury becomes airborne when coal and other substances are burned and eventually falls into lakes and rivers. There, it is absorbed by microbes and fish and, eventually, consumed by people.

Over the past 15 years, Minnesota has made great strides in reducing mercury from various sources, but coal-fired power plants actually put out more of it.

Last year, as the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency was putting together a mercury-reduction plan, environmental groups accused it of favoring utility interests, prompting Pawlenty to propose a compromise in February.

Erin Jordahl-Redlin, energy campaign coordinator for Clean Water Action Alliance of Minnesota, called the product of those subsequent discussions good but not great.

“We did have to give quite a bit,’’ she said. “And it’s pretty frustrating that the reason the governor is doing this is because the people of Minnesota have been pressuring public officials for years and years. Their support has finally made this good politics for the governor.’’

The approach is the latest of several in recent years aimed at reducing pollution from power plants.

In 2003, a deal was reached for Xcel to convert two metro-area coal-fired power plants to cleaner-burning natural gas and to upgrade pollution-control technology at a third plant. Last fall, Minnesota Power agreed to install additional pollution-control equipment at two coal plants in northern Minnesota.

“I think we’re on a roll in Minnesota,’’ MPCA Commissioner Sheryl Corrigan said.