All:
If anyone has information on mercury
discharged into fresh surface waters I would appreciate it
because...
There is a public hearing on Thursday,
December 4 at the UT Lake Erie center on a request by Bayshore First Energy to
raise the mercury limits for discharge into Maumee Bay - the notice says Lake
Erie but that is incorrect. Go to westernlakeerie.org for the notice and
additional information. According to a 2003 USEPA toxic release report,
Bayshore discharges five pounds of mercury into the bay a year. The much
larger nearby Detroit Edison power plant reports no mercury directly discharged
into surface water and the Consumers Whiting plant - about half the size of
Bayshore reports one pound of mercury discharged into surface waters in a
year.
I am researching the effects of five
pounds of mercury released at the shore in very shallow water - several feet
deep. The surface water mercury release is in addition to the 200 pounds
released into the air reported in 2003.
It is disturbing that Bayshore reports
releasing five pounds of mercury into the surface waters a year in this
fragile Maumee Bay estuary. I am attaching a aerial of the plant.
Bayshore, according to company studies takes in the whole Maumee River, the most
biologically productive in the Great Lakes.
More to come on this.. this is in
addition to the massive fish kills now under review at this plant - which
appears to make Bayshore the largest fish killing plant in the Great
Lakes.
Sandy
Western Lake
Erie Waterkeeper Association
Western Lake Erie has the Great Lakes Warmest,
Shallowest, Fishiest Waters
westernlakeerie.org
6565 Bayshore Rd., Oregon,
Ohio 43618
419-691-3788
sandylakeerie@aol.com