Lansing, MI - Fifteen environmental organizations from Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Ontario and New York are urging the Ohio Environment Protection Agency not to permit the development of the proposed FDS coking plant on the shores of Maumee Bay, Lake Erie.

According to the permit, the plant would emit up to six tons per year of hazardous air pollutants including mercury, arsenic, cadmium and lead. The plant would also be a major new source of smog and acid rain-causing chemicals, discharging up to four thousand tons of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulates and sulphur dioxide to the air. Lucas County, where the plant would be situated, is already a non-attainment area for ozone, with levels of nitrogen oxide higher than considered safe for human health.

"I am excited to see this level of cooperation from people across the basin on what is truly a Lake Erie-wide issue," said Zoe Lipman of the National Wildlife Federation's Great Lakes office. "This coking plant could put an additional 680 pounds of mercury alone into the air which could end up in the Lake where mercury is already a major problem. It goes against all the plans and recommendations for the lake - from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement to the Lakewide Management Plan."

Marilyn Wall, Conservation Chair, Ohio Sierra Club states: "there needs to be an ecosystem approach to projects impacting the Great Lakes." The 1978 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada calls for virtual elimination from the Great Lakes ecosystem of long-lived toxic substances like mercury that accumulate in the food chain and can result in neurological and developmental damage in wildlife and humans. A similar binational Great Lakes Agreement was signed in 1988 to control air emissions. The Lake Erie Lakewide Management Plan - released in 2000 by the Environmental Protection Agency, state and provincial agencies and other stakeholders from around the lake - designates mercury as a critical contaminant in Lake Erie. Their research shows dangerously high concentrations of mercury in the sediments of the western basin, including the Maumee River and Bay.

"A plant with emissions to the environment of this magnitude will affect southeast Michigan and Canada as well," said Dave Dempsey, senior policy analyst for the Michigan Environmental Council. "With the dead zone in the central basin, the avian botulism in the eastern basin, and the contaminant loads coming in from the Detroit River in the western basin, Lake Erie is literally under siege. We have to look at major new proposals like this one in the context of the health of the whole lake and the communities surrounding it."

Conservation organizations around Lake Erie are also concerned about the impacts of the proposed plant on the wetlands at Maumee Bay, and sustainable development in Ohio. "Ohio has already lost 90 percent of its coastal wetlands which act as nursery grounds for Lake Erie fish like walleye," said Vicki Deisner, executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council. "Restoration of Ohio's coastal wetlands is critical to supporting Ohio's $750 million sport fishing industry, much of which is Lake Erie based."
The Nature Conservancy, in collaboration with other private, state, local, and federal organizations, identified the Maumee River and Bay area as an area of biodiversity significance in their 2003 Conservation Blueprint for the Great Lakes.

The public comment period on the proposed new coking facility ends on June 3rd.

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