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, [...]
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 [...]
This post by David Jenkins originally appeared at Frum Forum and has been reposted here with their permission. Jenkins is Vice President for Government and Political Affairs for Republicans for Environmental Protection. On a recent campaign stop in Florida, Michele Bachmann waded into a political swamp by saying that she would drill in the Everglades [...]
President Obama announced today that he is tossing aside a long-anticipated plan to strengthen air quality standards for ozone. In this disappointing move, the Administration claims that rejection of this human health safeguard is an effort to minimize “regulatory costs” and “promote economic growth” according to a letter from the White House to the Environmental Protection [...]
It was one year ago when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a significant new rule to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants. That rule was known as the air pollution Transport Rule. On July 6, 2011 EPA announced the final version of that rule with only one major change: A new name. What [...]
