10/21/2003
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Eric Uram, 608-257-4994, 608-347-8008-cell
Caryl Terrell, 608-256-0565

BARABOO, WI – A presentation by Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Secretary Hassett will show the direction of the Doyle administration for people’s health and the future of Wisconsin’s tourism economy -- no matter what the content. Secretary Hassett is scheduled to present the DNR’s thoughts on altering two rules returned to the agency by two legislative standing committees at the Natural Resources Board Baraboo meeting.

“Clean fish and cancer-free air could be the tangible results of this action item before the Natural Resources Board,” said Caryl Terrell, legislative director for the John Muir Chapter Sierra Club. “Mercury pollution threatens our state’s tourism economy and toxic air pollution increases asthma attacks and been linked with cancer.”

Every lake and river in Wisconsin has a health warning due to widespread mercury contamination of fish. Families near clusters of industrial plants are subject to a toxic soup of cancer-causing air pollution. The agency proposed rules on air toxics, NR 445, and the first-ever mercury emission rule, NR 446; last spring.

“Polluting companies and their lobbyists worked overtime to convince two legislative standing committees to stall and weaken rules to address mercury and cancer-causing air pollution,” said Terrell. “But Secretary Scott Hassett can show the commitment of the Doyle Administration to clean healthy air for our families and tourist anglers by standing tall for cleaner air and controlling toxic air pollution.”

“Mercury and toxic air pollution threaten public health. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away,” said Eric Uram, Regional Representative for the Midwest Office of the Sierra Club. Uram served on two ad hoc committees that drafted the two rules with DNR staff to meet the concerns of affected industries and utilities, public health officials, neighbors of air pollution sources and fishing advocates.

“The rules are based on sound science and represent the agency’s best efforts to protect both the public’s health and industry’s profits. To backpedal now only promotes a political agenda,” added Uram. “There is a better way. There are real-world solutions to ending fish advisories and reducing birth defects, disease and premature deaths from the toxic soup of chemicals people are exposed to in the air they breathe. Protecting the health of our families is at stake. The alternative, allowing this pollution to remain under-controlled, is to ignore the effect it has on public health. In fact, it would imply that public health is unimportant and releasing this pollution should have no consequence,” concluded Uram.