Groups Propose Alternative to E.P.A. Rules on Mercury

Coal-fired power plants emit about 48 tons of mercury each year in the United States. This leads to great amounts of health risks, mainly through the consumption of fish. The Environmental Protection Agency developed a plan in reducing mercury emissions by 21% in five years and 70% by 2018. The regulator's federal plan is to achieve 80% reductions by 2008. One major problem with is plan is that plants have already had to spend millions of dollars to reduce emissions of other chemicals that may also help to reduce some of the mercury emissions, just not enough that this new plan is gong to require. Also government officials do not like the idea of assigning states a total number of permits for how much emissions they may have and selling unused permits to other states. Even though this may meet an efficient level of emissions nationwide, officials do not like the idea becuase it will just create "hot spots" for mercury.

Are there any other ways we could meet an efficient level of mercury emissions nationwide without using tradable discharge permits? Is there anyway to meet the standards while not spending millions more dollars?