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Coal plant pollution threatens US parks: report


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US regulators are proposing to weaken air quality laws, which would allow new coal-fired power plants to pollute US parks from Shenandoah in Virginia to the Great Basin in Nevada, a new report said on Thursday.

Amid rising power demand and flat US natural gas output, electricity generators are seeking to build power plants fired by abundant coal.
The fuel is cheap compared with other fossil fuels, but emits more pollutants, such as mercury and smog components sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

"President George Bush's administration is responding to this growing threat to our national parks by seeking to weaken and rewrite the laws that protect national park air quality," Mark Wexler, the clean air director for the National Parks Conservation Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said by telephone.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed refinements in so-called New Source Review rules that would change the way air pollution is calculated, allowing manipulation by industries seeking pollution permits, the NPCA said.

The changes would enable electricity generators, for example, to hide pollution spikes on hot days when their units typically run hardest.

Complaints that the revisions would harm park air quality have been underscored by US Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, who wrote to the EPA this year urging Administrator Stephen Johnson to abandon the proposed rule change.

The EPA did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the report. In the past, it has said that the rules would provide greater regulatory certainty.

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National Parks Conservation Association Report: Dark Horizons

http://www.npca.org/darkhorizons/

We then have no moral highground to take in chiding China or any other country about coal when we can't even get our own act together. 110 new plants proposed with a climate bill due to be debated in the Senate next month that actually allows for them to keep polluting. Where are we going with this?

JanforGore

15 responses // Coal plant pollution threatens US parks: report

  • I dont get it. I thought the US formally and officially recognized global warming as a serious problem in 2007. That means that we were supposed to change our mentality and our ways of dealing with energy needs. It does NOT mean we were supposed to build more coal power plants!!! Jesus, is our government too big and dumb to do anything right? Or are they just plain evil?

    Was our admittance of global warming and our promise to seek a new way of life just a trend? just an advertising scheme? Just a lie?
    stephenthomson
  • Well Stephen, in the case of this administration it was probably their arrgoant way of thinking saying it was a problem would shut us up. They have no intention of doing anything about it. And to be honest, I don' t trust many of the Democrats in this Congress either who always back down when it requires them standing up. And our government is not too big or dumb, but they surely are greedy and corrupt.
    JanforGore
  • I dont understand why they have no intention of doing anything about it. Dont they KNOW? Dont they get it?

    Can the love of money really trump common sense?
    stephenthomson
  • what are they gonna do to mess it up this time?
    currentkid
  • This is why I'm moving to canada... i can't stand US policy.
    current89
  • Unfortunately Stephen, it already has. And sure, they know and they get it...they just don't care. They care only for themselves. Which makes it all the more evil. The more I read and see the more I believe we really do need another revolution.
    JanforGore
  • http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5174391/
    Image...
    Coal plants are deadly.
    JanforGore
  • The only two revolutions i'm aware of in America are the first one, and then the one in the 60's, which only happened because young people got angry, and they only got angry because they were being drafted.

    The govt's learned its lesson. They're not going to make us do anything we dont want to do. We're too appeased by materialism and the American dream.

    How do you organize a revolution? or what has to happen in order for people to so angry they'll get out in the streets and be willing to walk in front of tanks and throw rocks at SWAT teams? And is that really what's necessary in order for the top of govt to hear the people?
    stephenthomson
  • stephen, we ARE walking that line right now, between moving towards proper social motivated change (the revoution u r talking about) AND/OR the other possibility, the one i fear the most, a police state, induced social havoc
    lfm
    • lfm
    • 2 months ago
  • reason has positioned itself very high only recently. information per se is not relevant anymore, simply cause it has become abundant and easily accessed. it is what we do with that reasoning and information that is shaping us, as we speak, blog, chat, vote and what not.

    action, revolutionary or not, is what has always shaped us.
    it jsut happens to be now the time in which we are AWARE of this.
    lfm
    • lfm
    • 2 months ago
  • I'm talking about an environmental revolution this time out, which is tied very closely to one seeking Democracy. Venues like this should be used for that goal more than just reporting news.
    JanforGore
  • Oh don't even get me started, Jan. Dominion Power, which serves about 65% of my state (VA), is erecting a new coal-fired plant near St. Paul in Wise County, just across the border north of Kingsport, TN and only 20 mi. (if that) from the southern end of the Jefferson Nat'l Forest.

    Over 40,000 citizens signed a petition to stop the plant from going in. In such a conservative state, that's pretty darn near miraculous. The bone we have been tossed is that Dominion plans to make it a biomass co-firing plant, and that they'll use circulating fluidized bed (CFB)technology which burns more cleanly.

    Southwest Virginia is the area hardest hit by coal. The rest of the state doesn't have enough deposits to rate a mention. CFB be damned, I wonder how many mountaintops they'll blow off in order to feed this thing.
    tlpatten
  • Hmm, yes it "plans" to do that, but will it? And just how clean is CFB technology? Where do the toxins go? And again as you stated, how many mountaintops will they blow off to get the coal? They always fail to mention the pollution and toxicity caused by the process of getting it there.
    JanforGore
  • Europe already went through their coal faze and realized it kind of sucks having an inch of soot on everything. Just wish we could learn from others mistakes.
    ivxx
  • Ok you say that coal is bad basicaly. By the way I am a coal miner. and no I am not defending them because that is my occupation. But let me ask you all this. Do you have electricity in you houses or place of business? If you said yes then you are using good ol' coal. Oh and don't drive your car either cause that causes pollution as well. So if you want to change things it really boils down to this either move to Canada or Europe or find a solution. All I hear are all these people that don't like coal and that it's dirty. Maybe all us hard working Coal Miners that you all like to attack should all go on strike and let everyone freeze in the dark. ;)
    tonyclark_81

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