The question: Why does it take 40 years to clean up a river?

The question referred to the scandalously slow effort to clean up dioxin in Michigan’s Tittabawassee River.

Dioxin from Dow Chemical’s factory in Midland, Mich., poisoned sediment in the river decades ago. Every time the river floods, it sweeps more of the dioxin-laced sediment downstream, poisoning fish and wildlife as the water heads for Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay.

State and federal officials have known since the 1970s that dioxin from Dow had poisoned the river. Sadly, little has done to clean up the mess, despite the fact that dioxin — widely regarded as one of the world’s most toxic chemicals — causes cancer and a host of other health effects in fish, wildlife and humans.

Michigan Radio’s Environment Report has done a masterful job of documenting this environmental debacle. The award winning reports can be found here.

The plodding effort to clean up the Dow’s dioxin mess is symptomatic of a larger problem with politicians and government agencies charged with protecting the environment and public health. In a nutshell, it takes our government far too long to solve many critical problems.

One need look no further than the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ handling of the Asian carp crisis. For more than a decade, the Corps and other government agencies have known that Asian carp — which were imported to commercial fish farms in Arkansas in the 1960s and later escaped into the Mississippi River — were swimming toward the Great Lakes.

These menacing fish, which are voracious eaters and multiply at rates that put rabbits to shame, could devastate the $7 billion Great Lakes fishery. And Asian silver carp, which rocket out of the water when disturbed by the sound of boat motors, could pose potentially deadly threats to the region’s boaters.

The Corps has dithered on the Asian carp issue for years. Now the fish are now on the brink of invading Lake Michigan and laying siege to the Great Lakes.

One would think that such a looming catastrophe would trigger urgent action by the Corps. Instead, the Corps will spend the next four years studying the best way to keep Asian carp in the Mississippi River system from invading Lake Michigan.

For years, the Corps told the public that an electric fish barrier in the Chicago Waterway System was keeping Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan. But a recent study, by the Corps’ own consultant, found that the barrier doesn’t deter all sizes of Asian carp.

The Corps’ response: More studies.

I know that patience is a virtue but sometimes it’s a curse, particularly when the fate of the Great Lakes is at stake.

It took the U.S. just 11 years to figure out how to put a man on the moon. We should be able to clean up a polluted river and stop a menacing fish in less time.

Granted, cleaning up dioxin and stopping a flood of invasive fish is a complicated and costly task. But it’s not rocket science.

Clean Air Act Protects Health

Via Flickr, Senor Codo

The Clean Air Act protects our health by reducing harmful air pollution like ozone (smog) and particulates (soot) that affect many areas of the country.

The Act addresses a more dangerous set of pollutants, toxic or hazardous air pollutants, such as benzene, found in gasoline; perchlorethlyene, emitted from some dry cleaners; and methylene chloride, used in paint strippers.  The agency has identified 188 toxic air pollutants that threaten public health, including dioxin, asbestos and arsenic and metals like cadmium and mercury.

At certain concentrations and durations, people exposed to toxic pollutants are at increased risk of getting cancer or other serious health effects, like damage to the neurological, reproductive and respiratory systems.  Most air toxics come from manmade sources like power plants, refineries and vehicles.

Tougher, New Limits

The Environmental Protection Agency this week announced proposed limits to reduce mercury, arsenic, dioxin and other toxic air pollutants spewing from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants.  Twenty years in the making, these limits will reduce 91 percent of the mercury released from coal-burning.  Coal- and oil-fired power plants are responsible for over 50 percent of U.S. mercury and acid gas pollution.

Mercury’s Harm to Mothers and Children

via NWF

People are exposed to mercury by eating contaminated fish.  Mercury released from smokestacks ends up in our waters where microorganisms change it into highly-toxic methylmercury that builds up in fish and works its way up the food chain to our dinner plates.

Once ingested, mercury can harm neurological development in unborn babies, infants and children. Because of this risk, the FDA warns pregnant women to curtail consumption of certain fish and shellfish because high levels of methylmercury can adversely affect a baby’s growing brain and nervous system.  EPA has documented mercury’s harmful impacts on children’s cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language and fine motor and visual spatial skills.

The new EPA toxics reduction proposal will have many health benefits.  EPA’s proposal can –

• prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths and 11,000 heart attacks a year;
• prevent 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and 11,000 cases of acute bronchitis each year; and
• avoid more than 12,000 emergency room and hospital visits and 850,000 missed work days due to illness.

Air Toxics Harm Wildlife Too

In addition to harming humans, toxic pollutants hurt wildlife too. Almost all of our lakes and reservoirs have mercury amounts exceeding safe levels and nearly all fish and shellfish contain traces of mercury, according to EPA.  Every state has a fish advisory of some type because of unsafe levels of mercury.

In lakes and streams, methylmercury goes up the food chain from organism to organism, so that many large predators end up with high levels of contamination.  It can alter fish development and reproduction.

In addition to fish, predators of small fish  are exposed to elevated levels of mercury in the environment.  It has been found in eagles, otters, loons, and endangered Florida panthers.  In animals, mercury can cause death, reduced fertility, slower growth and abnormal behavior, says EPA.  The National Wildlife Federation reported in March that fish like brown trout, walleye and largemouth bass may be harmed by mercury and that emerging research has found mercury harms terrestrial mammals, loons and migrating songbirds as well.

But the story does not end there. Recent research has found mercury contamination in our forests and other terrestrial habitats as well, indicating that far more species may be at risk of exposure than previously thought. For example, scientists have found elevated levels of mercury in insect-eating birds, including bicknell’s thrush and several species of songbirds. With multiple pathways of exposure, mercury contamination poses a very real threat to biodiversity all across the country.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Speak Out, Speak Up

You can speak out for cleaner air for mothers and children:

Urge the Environmental Protection Agency to set strong limits on mercury pollution from power plants to protect wildlife and our health.

Speak up for clean air at a public hearing. Here’s the hearing schedule:

May 24: Chicago, Illinois
Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro
799 West Madison Street
Chicago, Ill. 60611
Pre-registration deadline 5 p.m., May 19

May 24: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Westin Philadelphia
99 South 17th Street at Liberty Place
Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
Pre-registration deadline 5 p.m., May 19

May 26: Atlanta, Georgia
Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center
61 Forsyth Street SW
Atlanta, Ga. 30303-8960
Pre-registration deadline 5 p.m., May 23

To preregister to speak at the hearings, please email Ms. Pamela Garrett and let us know to look for you there by emailing alerts@nwf.org.

When you speak up at the hearing:

• Tell the Environmental Protection Agency that you support the new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that would limit mercury, arsenic, dioxin, and other toxic emissions from power plants.
• Give a few reasons why you are concerned about wildlife such as the harm mercury does to wildlife and to children.
• Urge the EPA to move forward and finalize strong Mercury and Air Toxics standards.