Several stories appeared today about the Governor’s plan to force coal-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions by 90 percent. This is one example.

Lawmakers and industry officials made it clear Thursday that Gov. Blagojevich’s proposal to drastically reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants is hardly a done deal.

Concerns about the cost and feasibility of Blagojevich’s plan — as well as the need for it — were some issues surfacing in the wake of the governor’s unveiling Thursday of tough new controls on mercury, a neurotoxin released into the air that settles in bodies of water, contaminating fish and the people who eat them.

I haven’t had a chance to follow up on it yet, but a commenter pointed out this potentially significant story yesterday. [emphasis added]

…two Illinois state government scientists claim that most of the mercury found in the environment is natural, not of anthropogenic origin. This finding flies directly in the face of controversial federal regulations designed to reduce environmental mercury by cutting power plant emissions.

The paper by Derek Winstanley and Edward Krug, titled “Comparison of mercury in atmospheric deposition and in Illinois and USA soils,” appears in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Science. Winstanley and Krug are with the Illinois State Water Survey, which Winstanley heads. He is also a former director of the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program, so is no stranger to controversial coal-fired emissions issues.

The background for the study is a long standing problem with the theory that coal-fired power plant emissions are the leading cause of mercury in fish, namely that there is no correlation between power plant locations and high mercury levels. To overcome this lack of evidence the proponents of the theory, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, have claimed that mercury circulates nationally and globally via a process of general atmospheric deposition.

Winstanley and Krug have tested this theory by comparing the estimated anthropogenic emission levels against newly-measured levels of mercury in Illinois, U.S., and world soils. The result, they say, is that human emissions cannot possibly explain the observed amounts of mercury. They conclude that there must exist a natural global mercury flux that is significantly larger than human emissions. Much of it may be water borne, not airborne. If so, then reducing the estimated 50 tons of mercury emitted by U.S. coal fired power plants might have little or no effect on environmental mercury levels.

As Winstanley and Krug put it, “It has been reported that most mercury (Hg) in USA soils is from atmospheric Hg deposition, mostly from anthropogenic sources. This paper compares the rates of atmospheric Hg deposition to amounts of Hg in Illinois and USA soils. The amounts of Hg in these soils are too great to be attributed mainly to anthropogenic Hg deposition.” Their conclusion is succinct — “The hypothesis that most Hg in Illinois and USA soils is of anthropogenic origin is rejected.”

The Illinois State Water Survey, according to its website, is “a division of the Office of Scientific Research and Analysis of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and an affiliated agency of the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, [and] is the primary agency in Illinois concerned with water and atmospheric resources.”

UPDATE: There’s a good rebuttal to the above article in comments by Truthful James.