West Views: Comments from Around the West on Western issues
Is Otter's outrage over mercury in Idaho selective?
IS OTTER'S OUTRAGE OVER MERCURY SELECTIVE?
Gov. Butch Otter is indignant that the feds might store 17,000 tons of mercury at the Idaho National Laboratory.
So why isn't Otter equally concerned about the 500 pounds of mercury Idaho industry spreads in this state every year, affecting its air, water and fish?
INL is among seven sites - including Hanford nuclear reservation - that may end up with a national stockpile of elemental mercury. Since there's no known way to dispose of the stuff, this could transform the site into a national waste dump.
That's a political beef more than an environmental or even health issue, however.
Mercury's danger involves how it causes brain damage and learning disabilities in kids and unborn children. For that to occur, the substance has to reach the environment and food chain. INL, which is almost hamstrung by its slavishness to safety, would have to get a lot of things wrong to allow 500 pounds of mercury to escape.
On the other hand, Idaho's outdated regs assume a person's greatest risk comes from inhaling airborne mercury near a factory. At that rate, the state might tolerate as much as 100,000 pounds worth of mercury emissions.
Idaho's mercury emissions come from:
- Monsanto's phosphorus production plant near Soda Springs: 489 pounds.
- Ash Grove Cement at Inkom: 8 pounds.
- Amalgamated Sugar at Paul and Twin Falls: 5 pounds each.
- J.R. Simplot plant at Pocatello: 1 pound.
Earlier this year, the Board of Environmental Quality pondered giving Idaho a better handle on controlling these emissions. When Monsanto, the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry and the Idaho Council on Industry and the Environment resisted, the board lost its nerve.
Monsanto now has joined with the Idaho Conservation League in asking the agency to draft tougher mercury management rules. The board - all gubernatorial appointees - takes that up Wednesday in Boise. If the governor is worried about mercury pollution in Idaho, the floor is his.
