The fishing is good on Sam Rayburn Lake this time of year. But generations who have grown up fishing and eating from the bountiful East Texas waters say these days they have to throw back most of what they catch. Like 12 other state water bodies and the entire Gulf Coast, Sam Rayburn is under a state-issued fishing advisory for mercury contamination.

In the rural community of Rivercrest, which lies on the north banks of the Sam Rayburn, many residents depend on fish from the lake and the nearby Angelina River, also contaminated, for subsistence. Neighbors say an unusually high number of children in the community suffer from mental retardation and other developmental problems and learning disabilities. One resident, Jimmy Lehrer said he is angry that mercury emissions are not monitored by state agencies and that there are no signs posted at the lakes warning about mercury.

"I raised my daughter on these fish," he said. "The people are being poisoned and nobody knows about it."

Mercury is a heavy metal linked to neurological and developmental disorders. It is emitted by coal-burning power plants and then settles to the ground where it washes into streams and lakes. Through a process called bio-accumulation, mercury is stored in fish tissue and makes its way up the food chain to human beings. The level of mercury in tested fish is often one million times higher than in the water.

Because there is currently no monitoring, Lehrer and his neighbors were looking forward to an EPA deadline last month for the agency to release guidelines that would have forced coal-burning power plants to cut emissions.
Instead, the EPA proposed a cap and trade plan that will set a broad limit for mercury emmissions, and allow companies that meet the limit to sell pollution credits to companies that continue to emit. While the plan will reduce the total level of mercury emissions nationwide, groups that were advocating for tougher rules say it leaves hot spots like Texas, which leads the country in mercury emissions, unprotected.

Public Citizens’ Tom "Smitty" Smith said Texas plants, recently forced to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions, would more than likely opt to buy credits from plants in other states than go through another round of costly pollution controls.

"There is nothing in this plan that guarantees local plants will clean up," he said. "Texas plants will be allowed to continue their toxic reign of terror over our communities."

One of the nation’s worst polluters is TXU Energy’s Monticello plant, emitting 1,300 pounds of mercury in 2001, according to the most current data from the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. Houston-based Reliant Energy operates three coal-burning plants in Baytown, Jewett and Fort Bend County.

As plants continue to burn coal unmonitored, local health department officials said Texans should look out for advisories and limit their consumption. Director of seafood safety for the Texas Department of Health Kirk Wiles said the agency posts fishing advisories on their web site but lacks enough funding to post signs at Sam Rayburn Lake.

As a result, word of the advisories does not always make it to communities who need it most. Lufkin Sierra Club member Dian Avriette has been working with residents in Rivercrest to raise awareness about the contamination. She said she doubts consumption habits will change.

"I’ll be down there and they’ll be having a fish fry and I say, ‘what are you doing, you know what’s in these fish,’ and they say ‘yeah, but we’ve got to eat something."

As the EPA’s deadline for tougher rules has come and gone, it would appear the nation’s worst polluters, like those in Texas, have dodged another bullet. For communities like Rivercrest, it is an opportunity missed. The tougher rules EPA had been drafting over the last three years would have reduced local mercury emissions by 90 percent.