space Press Releases, News Stories

By Suzanne Yohannan

WASHINGTON D.C., USA 11 September 2001  --Two controversial amendments on mercury storage failed to make it past congressional defense committees last week after the Pentagon opposed the measures, which would have required DOD to accept large quantities of mercury from private stockpiles created by the closing of chlor-alkali facilities across the country. Even a scaled-down measure by Maine Sen. Susan Collins (R) was rejected as part of the Senate Armed Services Committee markup of the fiscal year 2002 defense authorization bill Sept. 7.

In a two page memo stating its opposition to the House amendment, advocated by Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME), the Defense Department cites obstacles to DOD accepting the mercury, including the department's current lack of any hazardous waste permits for it and the fact that storage of any such private sector mercury would not be tied to any defense mission.

The Allen and Collins amendments had initially proposed that DOD be required to store the private stockpiles. The House Armed Services Committee passed the original Allen amendment in its markup of the defense authorization bill Aug. 1, but the measure hit a snag before the committee reported out the bill last week. Subsequent to markup, the language was stripped from the bill on procedural grounds based on the committee's lack of jurisdictionover the amendment, according to a congressional source.

It was determined that a clause calling for the EPA administrator to acquire the mercury -upon which DOD would store it on behalf of EPA - triggered Commerce Committee jurisdiction, according to the source. Collins pared back her amendment, but failed to get it included in last week's markup of the defense bill by the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to her office. Her revised amendment called for DOD and EPA to prepare, within six months, a report to Congress assessing the feasibility of DOD storing commercial mercury.

A staffer with Allen's office says that the congressman is now developing new language for an amendment to be brought on the House floor, should it be accepted by the Rules Committee. At press time, it was not yet clear whether his revised amendment will resemble Collins' scaled-down proposal or if, as news reports have suggested, Allen will attempt to limit the language to deal exclusively with 80 tons of mercury left over from the HoltraChem, ME, facility after it shut down a year ago. The bill is expected to come to the floor later this week.

The original amendments closely resembled a bill introduced by Allen earlier in the year calling for DOD to accept private stockpiles of mercury on an interim basis, a plan that was strongly endorsed by the Northeastern Governors Conference in a resolution passed in August.

DOD is currently wrestling with its own dilemma of how to address a national stockpile it says is no longer necessary for national security needs. In February, DOD announced its intent to fully evaluate the environmental impact of various operations for long-term management of its excess mercury (Defense Environment Alert, Feb. 13, p4). The department currently stores some 4,400 tons of excess mercury in the Defense National Stockpile (DNSC) that is housed in four locations across the country. There are no other existing mercury storage facilities, and EPA has yet to come out with any plan for managing retired mercury from private sources.

In addition to the HoltraChem facility in Maine, 11 other chlor-alkali plants in the United States still use the mercury-cell process to produce chlorine and caustic soda, but are expected either to close or to phase-out mercury use entirely in the coming years. For example, the Westlake plant in Kentucky, plans to eliminate mercury from its production by the end of the year and is expected to produce one million pounds of excess mercury.

Moreover, legislation in the works at both the federal and the state level to create programs for the permanent retirement of other sources of mercury, such as thermometers and convenience light switches in automobiles, would, if passed, create further stocks of excess mercury from private sources.

Environmentalists fear these private stockpiles will be reintroduced into the marketplace if DOD doesn't accept privately-held mercury now. But even environmentalists strongly in favor of the original amendments, acknowledge that the plan is problematic. "It's understandable that DOD has resistance," says one environmentalist. It is "in the business of defense, not environmental protection. The problem is that there aren't a lot of other games in town right now, and we don't have time to wait for EPA to get its act together."