Ohio River mercury decision passes authority to states

State officials along the Ohio River will now be left to decide whether companies can discharge mercury and other potentially harmful chemicals into the Ohio River in areas known as mixing zones.

Members of the board of the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) made the decision Thursday morning at a board meeting in Buffalo, New York, to the dismay of many environmental groups.

"This decision is disappointing and fails to recognize that polluters have already had 12 years to reduce their mercury discharges," a statement from the Environmental Law & Policy Center reads. "ORSANCO hasn't done its job well on mercury pollution so Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Pennsylvania need to step up and do it better. The commission missed a crucial opportunity here to set a firm deadline for achieving safe levels of mercury in the Ohio River. Without such a deadline, it's likely that polluters will just spend another 12 years twiddling their thumbs rather than taking concrete steps toward reducing mercury discharges."

A form of mercury can be ingested when eating fish and shellfish. The heavy metal builds up in the body and can affect the nervous system. Exposure is particularly dangerous for pregnant or women who are breastfeeding and their fetuses or babies.

The commission, headquartered in the Cincinnati neighborhood of California, is an interstate commission representing eight states that border the Ohio River and the federal government. It has monitored the health of the entire river and set pollution control standards since 1948.

Commission spokeswoman Lisa Cochran said earlier this week that if the board did decide to alter the ban, the states should be able to quickly decide and put their own regulations in place.

Some states, including Indiana, already ban mixing zones but do grant variances from time to time.

Cochran said the commission was not capable of policing the regulation of mixing zones -- which include several different chemicals and complicated processes -- and needed to leave it to the states so "this wouldn’t fall off and be buried in paperwork."

The states each have a permitting process, Cochran said, and their own rules can be adopted there.

Mercury in the Ohio River: To mix or not to mix

The commission has a special, important role to play on the Ohio River, said Madeline Fleisher, a lawyer with the law and policy center.

Now, when it comes to mercury and other bioaccumulative chemicals -- that is, those that build up and never go away -- ORSANCO's oversight will be inconsistent, Fleisher said.

"For this issue, it’s almost as if ORSANCO just doesn’t exist," Fleisher said.

The law and policy center now will likely turn its attention to making sure that the state's practices work and are transparent to the public.

Michael C. Miller, a professor emeritus in the University of Cincinnati's Department of Biological Sciences, has been studying how the mercury affects fish and other living things in the Ohio River for years.

He's disappointed in the decision by the board, but says the work the commission has done to monitor the river is imperative and must continue with mercury.

"The decision today, it's a politically-charged decision, not a science-based decision," Miller said. "But I don’t want to see ORSANCO go anywhere, they’ve been great for the river, historically."

Cochran would not provide the final voting tally and said it would not become available to the public until the meeting minutes are approved at the next board meeting.