The number one source of mercury pollution in the nation’s waters – a PPG Industries chemical plant near Natrium, West Virginia – must now comply with stricter limits on discharges of mercury into the Ohio River. West Virginia’s Environmental Quality Board imposed tighter clean water standards in response to a legal challenge to the plant’s discharge permit brought by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ) and the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment (Appalachian Center) on behalf of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition (the Coalition). The new limits are 76 times lower than the amount of mercury allowed under the challenged permit.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, PPG’s Natrium chemical plant discharged 32 pounds of mercury into surface waters in 2004 – more than a quarter of all the mercury released into surface waters by the top 100 mercury polluters in the country. Mercury is a highly toxic metal that accumulates in the bodies of fish, making them unsafe to eat. Mercury has been shown to damage the human nervous system and is especially harmful to women of childbearing age and children. Due to mercury contamination, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky have each advised that people should limit their consumption of fish from the river.

Pittsburgh-based PPG is a worldwide manufacturer of coatings, including Pittsburgh Paints. PPG also makes glass, fiber glass, and chemicals. PPG’s Natrium chemical plant makes chlorine by pumping salty water through vats of pure mercury. It is one of only eight remaining U.S. plants that still use this old technology, which dates from the late 1800s.

In 2005, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) issued a permit to PPG to discharge wastewater from its Natrium plant into the Ohio River. The permit gave the plant a two-year "grace period" to avoid meeting the required limit for mercury discharges, which is 12 parts per trillion (ppt). During this grace period, the permit allowed the plant to discharge 76 times more mercury than the legal limit (that is, 914 ppt instead of 12 ppt). The permit also allowed PPG to use a laboratory method that could only detect mercury when it was at least 200 ppt – over 16 times the legal limit. The Coalition’s attorneys argued that this method was useless in measuring compliance with the legal limit of mercury pollution.

The Coalition challenged the permit before West Virginia’s Environmental Quality Board, requesting that the Board reject the two-year grace period and require PPG to use a different laboratory method that is 1,000 times more sensitive in detecting mercury. The Board held a three-day hearing in December 2005 and January 2006. On July 24, 2006, the Board issued a final order granting both of the Coalition’s requests. Under the new permit, PPG must meet the lawful limit of 12 ppt immediately, and it must use the more sensitive laboratory method that can detect whether the plant is in compliance.

"For decades, PPG’s outdated plant has pumped toxic mercury into the Ohio River, which our families use for fishing and water sports," said Liz Garland, the Coalition’s Executive Director in Elkins, West Virginia. "It’s about time the state forced PPG to clean up its act."

"West Virginia’s Environmental Quality Board has done the right thing by tightening up the state’s weak water pollution permits and exercising real oversight," said Jim Hecker, co-counsel for the Coalition and TLPJ’s Environmental Enforcement Director in Washington, D.C. "The Coalition’s appeal has finally put a stop to the sweetheart deal between the state and one of our nation’s top mercury polluters."

"At the Board hearing, PPG admitted that it could not immediately meet the required mercury limits if it were forced to do so," said Joe Lovett, co-counsel for the Coalition and Executive Director of the Appalachian Center in Lewisburg, West Virginia. "We will now be carefully monitoring this plant to determine how and whether it will comply with the law."

The West Virginia Environmental Quality Board’s final order in West Virginia Rivers Coalition v. McClung is available online at www.tlpj.org.

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Trial Lawyers for Public Justice is the only public interest law firm dedicated to using trial lawyers’ skills and resources to advance the public good. Founded in 1982, TLPJ utilizes a network of more than 3,500 of the nation’s outstanding trial lawyers to pursue precedent-setting and socially significant litigation. TLPJ has a wide-ranging litigation docket in the areas of consumer rights, worker safety, civil rights and liberties, toxic torts, environmental protection, and access to the courts. TLPJ is the principal project of The TLPJ Foundation, a not-for-profit membership organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with a West Coast office in Oakland, California. TLPJ’s West Virginia State Coordinator is Troy Giatras of Charleston, tel. 304-343-2900. The TLPJ web site address is www.tlpj.org.