To the Editor:

Human health, wildlife resources and sportsmen had a big win recently in the Federal Appeals Court. The court reaffirmed the EPA’s authority to set limits on mercury, arsenic, and other pollutants from power plants under the Mercury and Air Toxics standard. Big polluters and climate deniers in Congress have launched every attack in the book to stop the administration’s lifesaving safeguards on public health, and natural resources protections but once again the EPA’s authority, granted under the federal Clean Air Act and upheld by the US Supreme Court, has been defended by the highest courts in the land. 

Mercury is a neurotoxin that damages children’s cognitive thinking skills when consumed. We have fishery consumption advisories from the Great Smoky Mountains to the Outer Banks. Most of that mercury falls from the skies and are directly sourced to burning carbon products as fuel. North Carolina anglers and their families should be able to eat the fish they catch without fear of harm. 

Big polluters and their allies are sure to continue their onslaught of obstruction as the administration works to set limits on the dangerous carbon pollution from power plants, the greatest contributor to climate change, but with the backing of average Americans across the country, the administration will continue to act. 

G. Richard Mode

Sportsmen Outreach Coordinator, National Wildlife Federation 

Morganton