The Bush administration's proposal to give power plants up to 15 years to curb unhealthy mercury pollution would be an "economic blow and a public health disaster" for Pennsylvania, state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty said.

Yesterday's federal proposal backs off imposing mercury controls at all of the nation's 1,100 coal- and oil-fired power plants in favor of a cap-and-trade system that would allow utilities to reduce mercury emissions from some plants but not others. Its goals are reductions of 14 tons or 30 percent by 2010 and 70 percent by 2018.

The proposal comes a week after a science advisory panel said the government should be issuing stronger warnings about mercury dangers to pregnant women.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Mike Leavitt will announce the proposed rules regulating mercury, as well as those governing soot- and smog-producing pollutants, this morning in Cleveland.

Altogether, the proposals will cost utilities an estimated $5 billion to implement, but power plants could delay installing any specific mercury controls for up to six years. They would also allow utilities to buy "emissions credits" from cleaner operating plants to meet the overall industry target. The EPA will seek public comment on the regulatory proposals before they become final.

Although Leavitt said the mercury, soot and smog rules "represent the largest air reductions of any kind not specifically mandated by Congress," the administration's proposal falls far short of the 90 percent reduction in mercury emissions by 2008 proposed by the Clinton administration and endorsed in December 2001 by Bush's first EPA administrator, Christine Todd Whitman.

McGinty, who oversaw development of the Clinton administration's pollutant control proposal while a White House environmental adviser, said mercury is highly toxic and shouldn't be governed by a trading program that might leave some power plants unregulated and produce "hot spots" of mercury contamination.

"We should be doing the best we can to reduce emissions and ensure against localized buildups," McGinty said. "Instead the administration is turning back the clock by proposing much weaker standards and, by allowing trading of pollution credits, removing the requirement that mercury be cleaned up at its source."

She said the administration's weakened proposals regulating soot and smog would also make it more difficult for the state to meet federal health standards for those pollutants, even though Pennsylvania utilities have already installed many controls.

"The proposals put us at a competitive disadvantage because they enable other states to continue to put out more airborne pollution which is then transported into Pennsylvania," McGinty said. "The EPA's own numbers show the proposals would fail to enable the states to meet Clean Air Act standards."

The federal regulatory proposal would not guarantee any reductions in the more than 7,400 pounds of mercury emissions from older coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania, which emit more mercury pollution than those in every state except North Carolina and Texas.

It also would not require emissions reductions at Reliant Energy's Keystone power plant in Shelocta, Armstrong County, which released 1,800 pounds of mercury in 2001 -- more than any other power plant in the nation.

Coal- and oil-burning utilities emit 48 tons of mercury annually, about 40 percent of the nation's mercury pollution, and are the largest single source. The 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act exempted utilities from mercury controls, but subsequent EPA scientific studies led to a decision in December 2000 to regulate the metal as a toxic pollutant.

The Bush administration, with the support of utilities, is seeking to reclassify mercury and regulate it under a less-stringent section of the federal air pollution law.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of utilities, told Bloomberg News that straight regulation could prompt more companies to switch over to natural gas rather than coal to conform to emissions standards. Because gas is more costly, that would mean higher costs to consumers, he said.

Mercury is released into the air when coal is burned. It falls to the ground and is washed into or falls into streams, rivers and lakes, where it accumulates in the tissues of plants and animals as methylmercury, the most toxic and harmful form of mercury.

Human exposure is primarily through eating contaminated fish. Pregnant women, children, subsistence fishermen and recreational anglers are most at risk for health effects that include brain and nervous system damage in children and heart and immune system damage for adults.

A recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in 12 women of childbearing age in the United States has mercury in her blood above levels that the EPA considers safe.

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration received a report from a scientific advisory panel that said the government needs to issue clear warnings to pregnant women and children about the risks of mercury in white, or albacore, tuna, which has nearly three times as much as cheaper "light" tuna.

Mercury has contaminated 10.2 million acres of lakes, estuaries and wetlands and 415,000 miles of streams, rivers and coastlines, resulting in advisories against eating fish caught in those contaminated waters in 45 states.