I apologize for the lag on this, but seeing Roxanne's post made me wonder just how much mercury comes from the garbage burner (HERC) and other local sources.
Here's what I found out: Up until 1994, HERC used to spew hundreds of pounds of mercury into the air each year. In 1994, activated carbon filters were installed and that had a big impact on reducing emissions. Annual emissions dropped from 186 pounds in 1993 to 37 pounds in 1994 and have slowly continued to decline. Emissions were 36 pounds in 1997, 30.1 pounds in 1998, 25 pounds in 1999 and 20.7 pounds in 2000. For comparison's sake, mercury emissions from the Xcel Riverside Generating Plant were 96 pounds in 1997, 102.9 pounds in 1998 and 80 pounds in 1999. My contact did not have info for 2000 yet. I was told that activated carbon has not been as effective for coal plants. I did not get a chance to ask why, but my limited engineering background tells me that it's probably due at least in part to the very small concentrations of mercury in coal. Xcel burns a LOT of coal to spit out 80-100 pounds of mercury a year. If anyone's wondering about the decline since 1994 in mercury emissions from HERC, it's due to declining amounts of mercury being tossed in the trash. That's right, the mercury that comes from HERC originally comes from what we put in our trash. So if you don't want HERC to emit mercury, don't put any mercury in your garbage - please take it to a household hazardous waste collection! Find the household hazardous waste collection facility or event nearest you by visiting: http://www.co.hennepin.mn.us/environmental/facilities/ Those interested can learn more about mercury in the environment at: http://www.moea.state.mn.us/berc/mercury.cfm Mark Snyder Windom Park [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 5/14/02 3:56 PM, "Ghost" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > While there are plenty of fish in the Mpls lakes (and a lot of people > are fully taking advantage of that situation to put food on their > table), the important related issue is how healthy it is to eat those > fish. Between mercury from the garbage burner & other sources, > gasoline, asphalt, metals, fertilizer, pesticides/herbicides, and other > standard city industrial pollutants all going into the lakes through > rain & runoff, people who eat a lot of those fish are likely getting far > more than their RDA of various poisons & carcinogens. > > So, let's not celebrate yet. It's great that we haven't destroyed our > city ecosystem too much yet, but let's think about what we can do to > clean it up. Many of the families catching fish do so because it's an > important food source, and many of the folks eating them are children, > who are much more susceptible to the chemicals simply because of body > mass. We should try not to poison either them or our recreational city > anglers. > > Roxana Orrell > Central _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
