This is regarding “Mercury proposal fails cost/benefit test” (Voice of the people, June 12), by Douglas Whitley, president of the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce. I could not disagree more. As an owner of a manufacturing company that employs several thousand people in Illinois, I applaud the governor for his strong stance to clean up the mercury pollution from the state’s old and dirty coal plants.
What the Chamber of Commerce fails to recognize is that there are very real human health costs associated with the pollution from the state’s dirty coal plants. As business owners, we have a choice. We can pay for pollution controls in the form of negligibly higher energy rates, or we can pay more for the health care of our employees afflicted with respiratory illness and neurological conditions due to exposure to toxins spewed from coal plants. (Our company spends more than $1 million just for health care related to respiratory illness and neurological disorders.) It seems like an obvious choice to me.
