Lake Michigan Mercury-Free by 2023

A grass-roots campaign to save our Great Lake

The Problem: Undisputed Facts

• Lake Michigan provides the drinking water to millions of people and is the one the largest sources of surface freshwater on earth

• Neuro-toxic mercury endangers health, accumulates and is carried up the food chain

• Lake Michigan mercury levels already have adversely affected commercial fishing

• Private industry disposes of its hazardous waste cost-free into the Lake to the detriment of public health; the public now underwrites private companies’ pollution of the Lake. 

• Enforcement of the Clean Water Act is left to the states.  Each state alone can profit more monetarily from allowing industrial waste disposal into the Lake than from enforcing EPA guidelines.  Regulation for the Lake as a whole is necessary to correct this imbalance

• Planned oil refinery and other industrial expansion will generate increasing amounts of hazardous wastes, including mercury

The Solution: Eliminate Mercury Emissions

• Technology exists to scrub the mercury from industrial waste before disposal into the Lake; industry should eliminate its own mercury and pay to have it done

• Banning mercury disposal into Lake Michigan will shift the cost of purifying water to the private entities that would otherwise cause the pollution; the elimination of mercury thus changes from being a burden for taxpayers to being a business expense for companies    

• Precedent exists for coal burning plants to substantially reduce airborne mercury.

   Illinois recently made significant reductions to its vapor emissions through better technology

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/lake-michigan-mercury