A new Environmental Protection Agency report shows toxic chemical emissions are down in New Hampshire.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Kerry Grens reports.
The EPA’s Toxin Release Inventory collects emissions data on six hundred fifty toxic chemicals from power plants and manufacturers.
New Hampshire businesses released six hundred thousand pounds fewer in two thousand four than in two thousand three.
Rick Rumba is the Environmental Health Program Administrator for New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services.
Rumba: The new data show that we continue to see reductions in the Toxics Release Inventory emissions from both manufacturers and electric generators. And in fact the most recent data show that our manufacturers reduced their emissions by more than 90 percent since 1988.
Grens: What is responsible for these reductions?
Rumba: As far as the manufacturers go, there are really three main reasons why they’ve been able to do these reductions. And I would say the first one is is that we do have some pretty strong regulatory programs, like the New Hampshire Air Toxics Control Program in New Hampshire that have restricted the emissions of toxic chemicals from our manufacturing facilities in the state. Second, over the last ten or twenty years, the economy’s changed and we’re really relying less and less on manufacturing. So today there’s fewer manufacturers emitting toxic air pollutants in the state. And third, the manufacturers that we still do have continue to find way to reduce their use of toxic chemicals or at least replace them with cleaner substitutes.
Grens: And from last year to this year, what percentage reduction in total are we looking at?
Rumba: It looks like it’s about, from 2003 to 2004, it’s about a twenty percent reduction.
Grens: That seems quite big.
Total New Hampshire TRI Air Emissions, 1988-2003. Courtesy NH Department of Environmental Services.Rumba: The electric generators are responsible for most of that and that can vary from year to year quite a bit, because of changes in the amount of electricity that is produced and the fuel that is being burned.
Grens: But is that fairly common to have fluctuations of 20 percent year over year?
Rumba: Yes. From the electric generators it’s common to have large fluctuations from year to year. For the manufacturers it’s a lot more consistent.
Grens: Which toxins have shown the biggest reductions?
Rumba: The chemicals that have shown the biggest reductions are hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, methanol, and ammonia. And three of those are basically—99 percent of it is related to electrical generation. The methanol is probably more related to pulp manufacturing.
Grens: Do these inventories represent the true amount of chemicals that are released into the air in New Hampshire?
Rumba: It’s self reporting, so each industry chooses how they are going to report on each emissions, and they report them that way. So it’s probably a pretty good indication of trends over time, are the amounts of toxic pollutants that are getting emitted going down or going up. But to try to compare one business to another, or one industry to another, it’s not as valuable.
Grens: So what does this say about the air in New Hampshire? Does this mean that we’re breathing cleaner air?
Rumba: We do do monitoring for some of these chemicals around the state, and we have seen reductions over the last five or six years, since we’ve started doing measurements. So I’d say, yes, the air is cleaner due to these reductions.
Rick Rumba is the Environmental Health Program Administrator for New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services.
He says that Public Service Company of New Hampshire is responsible for much of the twenty percent decrease in emissions in 2004.
A spokesperson for the company said the emissions reduction was due to cleaner coal being burned.
But the type of fuel can change from year to year.
PSNH said it is implementing more permanent emissions reductions—like shifting fuel from coal to wood and installing a plant scrubber at the Merrimack Station in Bow.
SOQ
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