Fish at Lone Star Lake exceed federal standards for safe consumption by young children and mothers, reflecting a trend of rising contamination levels in lakes across Kansas, home to one of the biggest mercury polluters in the nation.

The trend is alarming enough that the Kansas Department of Health and Environment may soon create a system to post mercury warnings, cautioning fishermen against eating their catches from the state’s lakes.

“We are seeing higher levels as time goes on, which is making us revisit the issue of fish advisories and what may be needed for Kansas,” said Sharon Watson, the KDHE representative.

The disclosure came after a national environmental coalition, Clean the Air, released a report this week examining federal Environmental Protection Agency data showing increasing levels of mercury contamination in lakes across the nation.

Kansas lakes

Though 290 lakes were tested, only one in Kansas — Tuttle Creek Lake, five miles north of Manhattan — was included in the report’s sample.

“It seems like the data at this point are pretty sparse for Kansas, in particular,” Emily Figdor, author of the report, said in an interview.

But Kansas officials have been monitoring the lakes for mercury pollution for more than 20 years, and said this week they had seen more contamination over time.

“One of the reasons is that mercury is a natural part of the environment,” Watson said. “But the increasing levels indicate there are other contributing factors.”

Figdor’s report showed that Kansas was home to the fifth-biggest producer of mercury pollution among coal-fired power plants in the United States — Jeffrey Energy Center at Saint Marys, which emitted 1,215 pounds of mercury in 2002. Coal-fired plants create 41 percent of all mercury pollution nationwide, Figdor’s report said.

The Lawrence Energy Center, north of town, ranks 115th in the nation in the amount of mercury it emits, which is far above the national average for such plants. Overall, Kansas is ranked 18th in the nation for mercury pollution from power plants. When burned in coal at power plants, mercury is released into the air and can settle onto land and water as far as 500 miles away.

Lawrence Energy Center, north of Lawrence, was ranked 115th among 485 coal-fired plants for mercury emissions. Overall, Kansas was ranked 18th in the nation for mercury pollution from power plants.

‘Disconcerting’

“The fact that the emissions at both of these coal-fired plants are delivering large amounts of mercury to surface waters is disconcerting,” said Donald Huggins, senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey.

Utility officials, though, said they’re moving to address the issue.

“Certainly we take this very seriously from a company standpoint,” said Karla Olsen of Westar Energy, which operates both the Jeffrey and Lawrence plants. “We certainly are environmentally aware.”

She said Westar was participating in a project at Sunflower Electric’s power plant in Holcomb to develop technology to remove mercury from the coal.

Olsen added, however, that Jeffrey was seen as such a large polluter simply because it generated so much power, more than three times the capacity of the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant at Burlington, for example.

“It’s really a function of size,” Olsen said. “It’s quite a large facility.”

EPA information on Mercury Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s Mercury Information Page

Distributed in emissions

Mercury is a neurotoxin that can damage developing brains in fetuses and youngsters. It can harm the nervous system, heart and immune system in adults. When burned in coal at power plants, it is released into the air and can settle onto land and water as far as 500 miles away.

“Mercury is an element,” Huggins said. “Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”

Watson said the EPA guideline for mercury concentrations was 0.3 parts per million in fish eaten by children under 12 and pregnant or lactating mothers. For other adults, the guideline is 1 part per million.

Clear the Air set the bar lower, saying that if people followed federal dietary guidelines — two meals of fish per week — a typical woman should be exposed to concentrations of no more than 0.13 parts per million.

By either standard, state samples of fish from Lone Star Lake fail the test.

KDHE’s tests found mercury concentrations between 0.35 and 0.39 parts per million in bass taken from the lake. Watson, however, said the information was incomplete.

“They really need to do more sampling, and more sampling is planned for that lake,” she said.

‘Lost my appetite’

Fishermen at Lone Star had mixed reactions to the news of mercury in their catch Thursday evening.

“Mercury don’t bother me a bit,” said 67-year-old Oskaloosa resident John Hatfield, pulling a six-pound bass from a bank line. “We’d play with it and rub it on our hands when we were kids. If it hasn’t bothered me now at 67 years old, I’m not going to worry about a little old fish.”

On the other side of the lake, Lawrence residents Bill Collins and Byron James changed their minds about eating their catch after learning about increased mercury levels.

“Well, I’ve lost my appetite for fish out of Lone Star Lake,” Collins said.

The problem isn’t limited to Lone Star. Watson told the Journal-World that during the past 20 years, mercury concentrations across the state in the kind of fish people generally eat have risen from less than 0.1 parts per million to nearly 0.25 parts per million.

“It is concerning,” Watson said, “that there are increasing levels of mercury.”

Samples from Clinton and Perry lakes, however, have generally shown levels of mercury concentration below levels of concern.

Tough to solve

Clean the Air said its report showed the federal government should make stronger efforts to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired plants, but EPA officials told The Associated Press that the Bush Administration already had taken a big step forward in deciding to regulate the emissions at all.

Even environmentalists concede the issue will be tough to solve.

“It’s very expensive to remove mercury from the coal,” said Charles Benjamin, the Lawrence-based attorney for the Kansas Sierra Club. “And there’s been a push to build more coal-fired plants because the price of natural gas has gone up.”