Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back key protections under the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, commonly known as MATS. First established in 2012, these standards were one of the most effective air-pollution protections in the United States, reducing mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants by roughly 90 percent and preventing thousands of premature deaths each year.

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. When released from smokestacks, it settles into rivers, lakes, and streams, where it accumulates in fish and eventually in human bodies. It damages developing brains, harms children and pregnant women, and contributes to heart and lung disease.

The updated 2024 standards would have required modest upgrades at a relatively small number of plants, many of which were already on track to meet the tighter limits. Instead, the rollback allows some of the dirtiest power plants in the country to emit more mercury, arsenic, and other toxic pollutants into the air and water.

This attack on environmental protections has reached the level of absurdity where protections against mercury – the most iconic bad-guy, kids-don’t-touch-this poisoner of all – will be rolled back.

To fully understand the absurdity, let’s imagine together how some of our most memorable Bible stories might be impacted if there was mercury in the waters:

The Creation (Genesis 1)

“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

God said, “Let the waters swarm with living creatures.” And they did. Fish darted through the currents. Birds wheeled above the surface. Life multiplied in every direction.

Unfortunately, the mercury levels in the waters were too high.

The fish carried the toxin in their bodies. The birds that fed on them grew sick. Children born generations later suffered neurological damage and birth defects. The waters that were meant to teem with life became vessels of poison.

And God saw what we had done to the waters. It was not good.

Naaman’s Healing (2 Kings 5)
 

“Naaman, commander of the army of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master … The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.” (v. 1)

In response to a plea for healing, the prophet Elisha instructed him “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” (v. 10)

Reluctantly, Naaman walked into the river. The water moved slowly around his legs as he lowered himself beneath the surface.

Once. Twice. Seven times he submerged himself in the river’s current.

But imagine if Naaman had stepped into the Jordan only to find warning signs along the riverbank: 

Mercury contamination. Unsafe for human contact.

The river that once carried God’s healing would now carry poison instead. Instead of emerging restored, Naaman would leave the water sicker than when he entered it.

The Baptism of Jesus (Matthew 3)

One morning Jesus and John the Baptist walked down to the banks of the Jordan River.

Crowds had gathered there, as they often did. People waiting to wade into the water. People confessing their sins. People hoping for the strange miracle that seemed to happen whenever John pushed someone beneath the surface of the river and raised them up again.

But when they arrived that morning, something was different.

The riverbank was surrounded by bright orange plastic fencing. A sign from the Roman authorities had been hammered into the ground:

WARNING: MERCURY CONTAMINATION
DO NOT ENTER THE WATER

The crowds stood awkwardly along the shore and John looked out over the river where he had baptized hundreds.

Jesus stepped forward toward the water. But the river that once held the promise of repentance and renewal had become too toxic to touch.

Our Water Stories

These stories are sacred and tap into something deep inside of us. Something that understands that, at an elemental level: water is life.

Now, imagine the sacred water stories of your own life: The iconic lake trips with your extended family. The creek behind your childhood home. The river from which your church draws water for baptism.

For me, it’s the stream behind my house where I go to find peace, the wild place I go to when, in Wendell Berry’s words in “The Peace of Wild Things”:

…despair for the world grows in me
 and I wake in the night at the least sound
 in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be.

Except this time, the water itself becomes the source of that fear.

Instead of delighting in playing in our sacred backyard stream with my kids, it becomes a site of danger, pollution, and sickness rather than one of wonder and wildness. I begin to imagine a future where my wife and I have to tell our children to stay away from the water — to fear it rather than love it.

Water is sacred, and not just in the Bible. It is sacred to millions of people who have stories, dreams, and fears just like mine. People who want to see their kids splash in creeks and lakes. People who fish and swim and wade. People who gather around rivers and baptize and are baptized in those waters.

It’s beyond absurd that those sacred waters might be filled with mercury.