Tag Archives: Environmental Protection Agency
EPA Issues First National Standards for Mercury Pollution from Power Plants
More than 20 years ago, a bipartisan Congress passed the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and mandated that EPA require control of toxic air pollutants including mercury. To meet this requirement, EPA worked extensively with stakeholders, including industry, to minimize cost and maximize flexibilities in these final standards. There were more than 900,000 public comments that helped inform the final standards being announced today.
EPA estimates that the new safeguards will prevent as many as 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks a year. The standards will also help America’s children grow up healthier – preventing 130,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms and about 6,300 fewer cases of acute bronchitis among children each year. Continue reading
Coal Power Produces Majority of North America’s Emissions
Research from the report shows power plants contribute 33% of the region’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the majority of those emissions can be tied to the combustion of coal. For the U.S. and Canada, coal-fired power plants alone are responsible for 98% of all mercury released from fossil-fuel electric generation and 88% in Mexico. Continue reading
EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s Remarks to the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Since the beginning of this year, Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has orchestrated 170 votes against environmental protection. That is almost a vote for every day the chamber has been in session to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency and our nation’s environmental laws. Much of this has happened in response to myths and misleading information. Continue reading
Fair Fight?
Whether people are opposed to or supportive of Sunflower’s coal-fired plant, the regulatory trail this project has traveled over the last four or five years raises questions and concerns. This is a contentious fight, but it doesn’t help KDHE or Kansas to be caught misrepresenting the facts of the case. Continue reading
EPA Says KDHE Not Honest About Permit Objections
An Environmental Protection Agency official has accused lawyers representing a Kansas agency of lying to the state Supreme Court about support for a permit that would allow a $2.8 billion coal-fired power plant to be built in southwest Kansas. Continue reading
EPA Spars with Kansas over Sunflower Coal-fired Power Plant
In their written arguments last month to the Supreme Court, Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) attorneys may have told a stretcher. EPA has consistently told the state that the permit needed more stringent limits on certain pollutants and KDHE not only ignored EPA’s request to amend the permit to include the more stringent limits, but now is actually attempting to mischaracterize EPA’s position to the court. Continue reading
EPA Empowered to Oversee Shale Extraction
Production from shale formations has grown from a negligible amount just a few years ago to almost 15 percent of total U.S. natural gas production and this share is expected to triple in the coming decades. By 2035, natural gas, generally, will make up about 45 percent of the utility generation market. Continue reading
Too Dirty to Fail? House Republicans’ Assault on our Environmental Laws Must be Stopped
No credible economist links our current economic crisis — or any economic crisis — to tough clean-air and clean-water standards. Our environment affects red states and blue states alike. It is time for House Republicans to stop politicizing our air and water. Let’s end “too dirty to fail.” Continue reading
Clean Up Big Coal
Sunflower management chose and continues to choose the low road, corrupting the licensing and now the extension processes Continue reading
Telling the Truth About the Environment and Our Economy
Misleading claims are translating into actions that could dismantle clean air standards that protect our families from mercury, arsenic, smog and carbon dioxide. All of this is happening despite the evidence of history, despite the evidence of Congress’ own objective Research Service, and despite the need for job creation strategies that go well beyond simply undermining protections for our health, our families and our communities. Continue reading
