On the recordMarch 18, 2004
The difficulty with mercury is just what the gentleman said. Mercury is a substance that does travel some distance, but lots of it comes down in the vicinity of the power plant itself. So along the Ohio River Valley in east Texas, in other parts of the country where we have coal-fired power plants, what the administration's proposal is basically saying is we do not care if the dirtiest plant in the country stays just as it is. We are going to develop a system that was developed for sulfur dioxide that will allow that dirty plant to buy credits from clean plants, and so the dirty plant can simply continue spewing out the mercury and poisoning people in the surrounding area. It is the height of irresponsibility.
Source
govinfo.gov
