Dallas, Texas Mayor Laura Miller is more than a little irritated.

Texas, which already ranks number one in the nation in mercury emissions, is the next state to suffer from what Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell so accurately calls a story of energy, corruption and greed. An electric-power company known as TXU has announced plans to build eleven new coal plants in Texas by 2011, doubling its current pollution. Congress is expected to crack down on global warming within the next five years, creating an industry rush to build over 150 new plants in hopes of being exempt from these new regulations. In addition to dumping hundreds of millions of tons of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere each year, coal fired power plants are by far the nation’s largest unregulated source of mercury pollution, with the industry’s pollution-related costs falling onto the shoulders of the public. And the public is tired of it. That’s why TXU’s John Wilder (who was the eleventh highest-paid executive in America in 2005) is meeting opposition from Laura Miller and citizens from more than thirty cities and towns in Texas.

What does this have to do with food? Sadly, a whole lot.

This year, in the most widespread survey of mercury in the nation’s streams, researchers from Oregon State University and the EPA found mercury in every single fish of the 2,700 species analyzed. The fact that it was present in every single fish suggests an atmospheric source of the contaminant, proving the battle to protect our food supply relies heavily on the protection of our environment from corporate polluters like TXU. The health effects from mercury exposure are nothing to brush off, and consuming contaminated fish is the primary way people in the U.S. are exposed.

TXU and others like them try to greenwash our concerns away, sending toxicologists to city council meetings where they claim that mercury isn’t really that bad. You know the story. But the more active we are in our opposition to this arrogance and greed, the better. Laura Miller’s Texas Clean Air Cities Coalition, which will now have a voice in the permitting process, certainly speaks for all of us.