Ohio wastewater plants seek exception to mercury rule

Associated Press

WILLOUGHBY, Ohio

Ohio wastewater treatment plants near Lake Erie are asking regulators to let them continue discharging mercury into the water at a rate above the limit outlined more than a decade ago in an effort to protect the Great Lakes.

Plants in Mentor and Madison in northeast Ohio are among more than 70 that have received regulatory approval for mercury discharges above the limits in their permits, and 19 others are seeking similar approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, the News-Herald in Willoughby reported Saturday. The treatment plants had to submit plans for reducing levels of mercury and other pollutants.

Mercury flows into the plants as waste from dental offices and other local industries. In the mid-1990s, the Great Lakes Initiative set the limit for discharging mercury at 1.3 parts per trillion, comparable to one drop in 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Until late last year, the plants were able to use areas known as mixing zones to blend pollutants into cleaner waters to reduce the concentration to acceptable levels, but they now must meet the limit at the point of discharge.

“To achieve the 1.3 parts per trillion limit, the cities would have to install extremely costly technology that would result in substantial economic impacts,” Ohio EPA spokesman Mike Settles told the newspaper.

Instead, the facilities are seeking exceptions to the regulations and identifying plans to reduce mercury levels, with some hoping to talk with the businesses that produce the mercury waste to find ways to limit it.

That doesn’t sit well with some environmentalists in the region, who say facilities have had more than a decade to comply with the rules now in effect, and they worry the exceptions will undercut the intended reduction in pollutants and leave Lake Erie receiving the same levels of mercury it’s had for many years.

“We can’t look at this as too expensive,” Chris Trepal, executive director of Ohio Earth Day Coalition in Cleveland, told the News-Herald. “We need to figure out how to ramp down (the levels) and work toward a goal of meeting the water quality criteria.”

Mercury can contaminate fish in the water and, if it gets into a person’s body, can be dangerous to human health.