Mercury Rules Rising - Strange Bedfellows Prevail

A company wants more regulation? The Idaho Board of Environmental Quality voted 5-0 to write rules that make big mercury polluters use the best technology to control the neurotoxin. The idea came from the Idaho Conservation League and Monsanto, whose Soda Springs phosphorus plant is the only Idaho facility big enough to qualify.

Will this reduce mercury in lakes and fish? Not immediately. Experts disagree over whether local or global industrial polluters are responsible for fish advisories on 22 Idaho lakes and for bass statewide. But even if all mercury pollution ended, it will be years before mercury levels drop in fish.

So everybody's happy? No. Representatives of other industries, including J.R. Simplot Co. and Amalgamated Sugar Co., are worried that the rules might cost them if the threshold is set too low. Neither company says it emits much mercury, but they don't trust the process.