To the editor:

Because I go fishing a lot, I am very grateful that KDHE Secretary Rod Bremby denied the permit for building two coal-fired power plants in western Kansas.

Carbon dioxide emission was cited as the main reason for denying the permit, but mercury pollution also results from the burning of coal, and to me that concern was equally serious. (Rainfall occurring downwind of power plants washes microscopic particles of mercury from the sky; they enter our surface water and begin bio-accumulating in fish.)

We often have westerly winds. Thus, denying that permit helps shield the lakes and streams of central and eastern Kansas from worsening levels of aquatic mercury contamination.

Why is that important? Because already a state health advisory warns against eating largemouth bass caught from our own nearby Lone Star Lake. Increase Lone Star’s mercury pollution and the clock starts ticking for smaller, tastier, shorter-lived panfish (bluegill, crappie, redear sunfish) to be the next species declared unsafe to eat.

In the United States fishing is the most popular of all the outdoor sports, an activity that directly and indirectly generates billions in retail activity annually. Our love of sport fishing is not some frivolous luxury, it is a fundamental “quality of life” need, a recreation and food-gathering option that we must never lose. But it will be lost if airborne mercury levels keep poisoning our surface waters to the point where no species of wild-caught game fish is safe for human consumption.

Joe Hyde,

Lawrence