May 24, 2002 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants are America’s largest toxic polluters, responsible for nearly two-thirds of the poisonous contaminants in the nation’s air and water, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. In its most comprehensive inventory of pollution and its sources, the EPA said mining of hard-rock minerals – gold, silver, uranium, copper, lead, zinc and molybdenum – was responsible for 3.4 billion pounds of toxic pollutants in 2000. Coal-burning electric generating plants were responsible for another 1.2 billion pounds.

While mines and power plants continued to be the biggest source of pollution, the EPA said the total amount of toxic chemicals released in 2000 declined 8 percent from 1999, from 7.7 billion pounds to 7.1 billion pounds.

EPA’s latest annual Toxics Release Inventory was expanded to include eight new toxic chemicals, including dioxin. It also includes new reporting requirements for 20 other chemicals such as mercury and PCBs that are worrisome in even small amounts because they persist and accumulate in the food chain.

Dioxin and 11 other chemicals in the EPA inventory are covered under a global treaty banning so-called persistent organic pollutants that President Bush earlier this month sent to the Senate for ratification. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the new data would help citizens make decisions about protecting their environment and assist the agency in analyzing trends nationally and locally.

The EPA focuses on the amount of toxic chemicals that industry reports as having been released into the environment, not the entire amount produced. In 2000, 38 billion pounds of such chemicals in production-related waste were reported as having been handled or processed – an increase of 26 percent over the nearly 30 billion pounds in 1999, the EPA said.

Environmentalists contend many more chemicals are released into the environment after they are managed than is reported in EPA’s inventory. They say treatment facilities, incinerators and landfills don’t remove all the toxic chemicals, and that many federal Superfund sites that handle the nation’s most hazardous waste are leaking.

“A lot of facilities are managing to get rid of their toxic waste without dumping it into the environment immediately, so they don’t have to report it as direct pollution,” said Jeremiah Baumann, environmental health specialist for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy organization. “It gets sent somewhere else where it oftentimes ends up in the environment anyway.”

Four mining states, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Alaska, again had the highest volume of toxic releases: Nevada with 1 billion pounds and Utah with 956 million pounds (both states down from 1.1 billion pounds each in 1999); Arizona, 744 billion pounds (down from 963 million pounds); and Alaska, 535 billion pounds (up from 433 million pounds).

The same four states headed the list in 1999 and 1998, the first year when mining wastes were calculated in the EPA report. The National Mining Association said Thursday the data show mining releases are “generally lower” than in 1999.

“We end up reporting a lot of naturally occurring metals that are in the rock,” said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the mining trade group.

Bush’s home state, Texas, ranked fifth for toxic releases, based on reporting by manufacturers, the most in that category for any state.

During 2000, the last year Bush was governor, the state released 301.5 million pounds of toxic pollution, or nearly 11 percent of all the releases reported by manufacturing industries nationwide, according to the EPA.

Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign was the biggest single recipient of contributions from the mining and electric utility industries, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics. The Bush campaign received at least $438,989 from electric utilities and $203,696 from mining interests including $108,821 from coal, the center found.

Energy interests as a whole ranked among Bush’s top 10 industry givers, the center’s analysis found.

EPA officials cautioned that the annual inventory should be used as a guide and not necessarily an indicator of health risk because the report provides no information on exposure or specific toxicity of the chemicals.

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On the Net:

EPA Toxic Release Inventory: http://www.epa.gov/tri