Earlier this week I had the pleasure of working in Charlotte, NC with Dr. Peter Frumhoff, Director of Science and Policy with the Union of Concerned Scientists, to release the new Energy and Water in a Warming World Initiative (EW3) report, Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants. Peter is one of the key advisers to the [...]
A new report by the Energy and Water in a Warming World Initiative (EW3), “Freshwater Use by U.S. Power Plants: Electricity’s Thirst for a Precious Resource,” details how water use by power plants for cooling needs stresses freshwater resources around the country, including here in the Southeast. The report also reveals that the reporting of water [...]
In the past few weeks, new information has become publicly available about two important pending rules from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). One rule would set the first-ever, national standards for greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Know as the greenhouse gas New Source Performance Standard (GHG NSPS) rule, EPA announced on October 29 that [...]
This blog was written by Eriqah Foreman Williams with input from Amelia Shenstone. On Saturday October 15, free burgers, beautiful weather, and a high school marching band drew Covington, GA residents to an unusual event – a community health fair, including free mercury testing courtesy of SACE. Southern Alliance for Clean Energy partnered with Quad [...]
The following is a post written by Professor Rena Steinzor and originally published yesterday on the Center for Progressive Reform Blog. As Prof. Steinzor notes, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to ignore the lessons of the Kingston coal ash disaster and to pull the rug out from under the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to [...]
The White House took a strong stand for the environment yesterday, issuing a statement against a proposed bill currently looming in Congress that would undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to adopt strong safeguards for coal ash management. In that statement the Administration specifically identified the 2008 Kingston disaster as a reminder of why strong [...]
East Tennessee is not commonly known as a hotbed of environmental activism, but last fall hundreds of people turned up in Knoxville to ask the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to adopt a special hazardous waste designation for coal ash. Support for EPA’s public health and environmental safeguard is strong here because the 2008 Kingston coal [...]
Congressional supporters of dirty coal are running out of options. The coal-power industry is under pressure to finally clean up its act and efforts to argue that coal power is clean are not convincing. As a result, the coal industry has stooped to threats, claiming, among other things, that compliance with human health and environmental [...]
This week marks the beginning of a federal trial resulting from the 2008 Kingston coal ash disaster. That environmental catastrophe resulted in 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash being dumped in Roane County, Tennessee, making it the biggest environmental disaster of its kind in history. Now, nearing the third anniversary of the disaster, [...]
President Obama recently announced the cancellation of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to update weak and scientifically unsupported Bush-era ozone standards. The President based this unfortunate decision on the newly popular idea that protecting human health and the environment is bad for the economy. The President bought into this rhetoric from Tea Party elites despite [...]