By Alabama Public Radio
Knoxville, TN – Environmentalists say the new Environmental Protection Agency plans to reduce mercury pollution don't go far enough. But the Tennessee Valley Authority is praising the plan. The new rules call for power plants nationwide to cut mercury emissions in half by the year 2025. TVA says its current program of installing pollution controls at its biggest steam plant boilers would allow it to meet the new targets by the end of the first phase in the year 2010. TVA estimates that its plants produce three percent of the mercury in the United States every year. It has 11 coal-fired plants in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.