Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

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Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, today along with Senator CARPER, I am introducing the Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act. This bill would ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, has accurate information about the extent of mercury pollution.

A comprehensive national mercury monitoring network is needed to protect human health, safeguard fisheries, and track the impact of emissions reductions. By accurately quantifying regional and national changes in atmospheric deposition, ecosystem contamination, and bioaccumulation of mercury in fish and wildlife in response to changes in mercury emissions, this monitoring network would help policy makers, scientists, and the public to better understand the sources, consequences, and trends in United States mercury pollution.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin of significant ecological and public health concern, especially for children and pregnant women. It is estimated that approximately 410,000 children born in the U.S. were exposed to levels of mercury in the womb that are high enough to impair neurological development. Mercury exposure has gone down as U.S. mercury emissions have declined; however, levels remain unacceptably high.

Each new scientific study seems to find higher levels of mercury in more ecosystems and in more species than we had previously thought. For example, as of 2008, every state in the country has issued mercury advisories for human fish consumption. These advisories cover 57 percent of the Nation's total lake acreage, and 68 percent of our total river miles. This is 19 percent more lake acreage and 42 percent more river area than in 2006.

At present, scientists must rely on limited information to understand the critical linkages between mercury emissions and environmental response and human health. Successful design, implementation, and assessment of solutions to the mercury pollution problem require comprehensive long-term information--information that is currently not available. We must have more comprehensive information and we must have it soon; otherwise, we risk making misguided policy decisions.

Specifically, the Comprehensive National Mercury Monitoring Act would direct EPA, in conjunction with the Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other appropriate Federal agencies, to establish a national mercury monitoring program to measure and monitor mercury levels in the air and watersheds, water and soil chemistry, and in aquatic and terrestrial organisms at multiple sites across the Nation.

The act would establish a scientific advisory committee to advise on the establishment, site selection, measurement, recording protocols, and operations of the monitoring program; establish a centralized database for existing and newly collected environmental mercury data that can be freely accessed on the Internet; and require a report to Congress every 2 years on the program, including trend data, and an assessment of the reduction in mercury deposition rates that are required to be achieved in order to prevent adverse human and ecological effects every 4 years.

We must establish a comprehensive, robust national mercury monitoring network to provide EPA the data it needs to make decisions that protect the people and environment of Maine and the entire Nation.

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