With less than a week to go before Christmas, you might think that this post is about an early present. In fact, it’s about a late present—two decades late—but it is a fantastic present anyway. Today, after more than two decades of delay, EPA has finally announced strong, life-saving emission limits for mercury from coal [...]
National Public Radio’s Morning Edition ran a story today on how Southern Company is putting its corporate policy of aggressively fighting beneficial health standards ahead of mothers and children, as well as fish and other living organisms. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new standards to limit emissions of mercury, a toxic heavy metal, and [...]
Georgia Power Company (GPC) operates a fleet of old coal plants. Their oldest coal units, Yates units 1 and 2, are 61 years old. Unlike wine, cheese or a savings account, coal plants do not get better with age. They become more expensive to maintain, less efficient and more damaging to human health and the [...]
Recent articles in the New York Times and the Raleigh News & Observer suggested that North Carolina and its governor, Bev Perdue, may have played a key role in halting White House efforts to ratchet up the current ozone air standards. In September, the Obama Administration suddenly announced it was dropping its two-year effort to [...]
This blog was written by SACE intern Jeannie McKinney and Natalie Mims. Our nation has seen an exponential rise in environmental activism and energy problem solving within the last decade, and the Southeast is no exception. Today, community groups are starting to create their own energy and sustainability solutions to local and national environmental problems. [...]
Earlier today, the U.S. Senate solidly rejected an effort to place the recently finalized Cross-State Air Pollution Rule on ice. By a vote of 56 to 41, Senators defeated a resolution offered by Kentucky Senator Rand Paul (R) that sought to block implementation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. Starting [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
