River pollution and mercury

You may have read or heard that the Ohio River is once again considered the most polluted river in the country. Here is an article on The Courier-Journal website talking about it.

What I found interesting was the part about how power plants are removing mercury from their air emissions, but the element may be finding its way into the river because the effluent from scrubbers has to go somewhere.

There is another thing in here that interested me. It had to do with mixing zones for discharges that dump mercury into the river.Although this particular article does not identify the West Virginia plant with the mixing zone variance, it probably is the Axiall (formerly PPG) plant in Wetzel County, near New Martinsville. In fact, here is an older Courier-Journal article that identifies that particular plant.

And here is one I did in 2012 while I worked for The State Journal in Charleston about it.