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WASHINGTON, DC — “A federal court Friday put on hold a controversial Obama administration regulation aimed at reducing power plant pollution in 27 states that contributes to unhealthy air downwind.
More than a dozen electric power companies, municipal power plant operators and states had sought to delay the rules until the litigation plays out. A federal appeals court in Washington approved their request Friday.
…In the first two years, the EPA estimates that the regulation and some other steps would have slashed sulfur dioxide emissions by 73 percent from 2005 levels, and nitrogen oxides will be cut by more than half.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution from power plant smokestacks can be carried long distances by the wind and weather. As they drift, the pollutants react with other substances in the atmosphere to form smog and soot, which have been linked to various illnesses, including asthma, and have prevented many states and cities from complying with health-based standards set by law.”
— Dina Capiello, Associated Press
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 It's well known that mercury causes damage to developing fetuses, with long-term effects on the child. NEW YORK, NY — “The Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a rule that for the first time requires U.S. coal and oil-fired power plant operators to limit emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants.
EPA rules in place under the 1990 Clean Air Act have targeted acid rain and smog-forming chemicals emitting from power plants. But perhaps surprising to many, those rules have never included limits on mercury, a neurotoxin known to damage developing fetuses and children.
How this policy affects your health
The benefits of this new rule, in terms of dollars saved and death prevented, far outweigh the costs to companies and consumers, according to peer-reviewed EPA studies.
U.S. power plants account for only about 1% of global mercury emissions. Even so, for each dollar spent reducing mercury and hazardous air pollutant emissions under the new rule, the EPA projects up to $9 in health benefit savings by preventing an estimated 11,000 premature deaths and 4,700 heart attacks each year.
Among children, the new limits are projected to prevent 130,000 cases of asthma and 6,300 cases of acute bronchitis each year, the EPA estimates.”
— CNN
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— Editorial, Kansas City Star
 WASHINGTON, D.C. — “The current fleet of electric power generators has a wide range of ages. The oldest power plants tend to be hydropower generators. Most coal-fired plants were built before 1980. There was a wave of nuclear plant construction from the late 1960s to about 1990. The most recent waves of generating capacity additions include natural gas-fired units in the 2000s and renewable units, primarily wind, coming online in the late 2000s.”
— U.S. Energy Information Administration
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 COLUMBUS — “Ohio’s debris landfills were unregulated for decades because the materials dumped in them — concrete, drywall and splintered lumber — were deemed harmless. But that’s changed for the 53 operating landfills, including five in central Ohio.
Problems arose after several landfills started taking millions of tons of debris from waste haulers as far away as New Jersey and New York. One site, Warren Recycling in Trumbull County, became notorious for underground fires and clouds of noxious hydrogen sulfide gas.
That landfill, which was closed in 2004, helped prompt state lawmakers to pass the 2005 water-monitoring law.
The Ohio EPA first proposed regulations in 2006 but withdrew them after industry officials complained that compliance would be too expensive.”
— Spencer Hunt, The Columbus Dispatch
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 Burning coal causes smog, soot, acid rain, global warming, and toxic air emissions. NEWARK, NJ — “The E.P.A. rule constitutes a big victory for environmentalists and scientists who have worked for 20 years to regulate these pollutants — and an even bigger one for the public. So, the Republicans want to kill it. What? Yes, and here is (also) where the madness comes in (i.e, not just from mercury exposure but from ideological blindness and greed). The GOP party line is that we must not only avoid any new environmental regulations but we should roll back the protections we already have.
While rules may be guidelines for the unimaginative in some places, here they are an essential activity of government. Especially when it comes to human health and safety. Why? Because some people, in key places, would have us allow children to be exposed to mercury levels that impair learning. It’s that simple and that sad.
In another political world, maybe guidelines would be all we’d need but not in this one, not here, not by a long shot. Not only does capitalism require regulation, but the combination of special interests, money, and politicians-for-sale requires no less than an active, regulating government acting assertively in the interests of its citizens.”
— Linda Stamato, NJ.com
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— Editorial, Los Angeles Times
— Editorial, Albany Times Union
— Editorial, North Jersey Record
 AKRON — “The point isn’t to say implementation will be easy. Ohio ranks as the nation’s second leading emitter of mercury pollution. FirstEnergy and especially American Electric Power face making substantial investment.
One option for power companies is closing down aging plants. The Associated Press conducted a survey of plant operators and found that as many as 68 coal-fired plants, or 8 percent of the nation’s capacity, will be shut down in the years ahead. The average age of these plants is 51 years, indicating that they already are nearing retirement. Why not just wait? Because that has been the thinking for decades, power companies then finding ways to prolong the life of dirty plants.
Be skeptical, too, of dire warnings about portions of the country losing power. For starters, the rule contains enough flexibility. More, it states clearly, and logically, that if there is a threat to the power supply, the implementation regimen will be adjusted. Know that the North American Reliability Corp. has observed recently that it doesn’t think the lights will go out because of the new limits.”
— Editorial, Akron Beacon Journal
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 NEW YORK, NY — “As far as I can tell, even opponents of environmental regulation admit that mercury is nasty stuff. It’s a potent neurotoxicant: the expression “mad as a hatter” emerged in the 19th century because hat makers of the time treated fur with mercury compounds, and often suffered nerve and mental damage as a result.
Hat makers no longer use mercury (and who wears hats these days?), but a lot of mercury gets into the atmosphere from old coal-burning power plants that lack modern pollution controls. From there it gets into the water, where microbes turn it into methylmercury, which builds up in fish. And what happens then? The E.P.A. explains: “Methylmercury exposure is a particular concern for women of childbearing age, unborn babies and young children, because studies have linked high levels of methylmercury to damage to the developing nervous system, which can impair children’s ability to think and learn.”
That sort of sounds like something we should regulate, doesn’t it?
The new rules would also have the effect of reducing fine particle pollution, which is a known source of many health problems, from asthma to heart attacks. In fact, the benefits of reduced fine particle pollution account for most of the quantifiable gains from the new rules. The key word here is “quantifiable”: E.P.A.’s cost-benefit analysis only considers one benefit of mercury regulation, the reduced loss in future wages for children whose I.Q.’s are damaged by eating fish caught by freshwater anglers. There are without doubt many other benefits to cutting mercury emissions, but at this point the agency doesn’t know how to put a dollar figure on those benefits.”
— Paul Krugman, New York Times
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CLEVELAND — “Ohio’s 129th General Assembly did utility ratepayers no favors when it took a meat ax to the Office of Consumers’ Counsel.
The office represents residential utility customers in rate hearings and the like. It’s funded by a minuscule assessment on utilities. Last year, the counsel’s budget was $8.5 million — the equivalent of 74 cents per Ohioan, although not a penny of that came from the state’s general revenue fund.
Ohio legislators squeezed that to $5.6 million for this year, $4.1 million for next year — a reduction of more than 50 percent.
The fig leaf Republicans slapped on this naked anti-consumer attack was a claim that the consumers’ counsel duplicated some work of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. But the PUCO is like a court; it’s supposed to hear from both sides, not advocate for either.
So when legislators gelded the consumers’ counsel, they effectively guaranteed representation to only one side of a rate case — the utilities’ side. That’s a level playing field?
And make no mistake: This thinly veiled proxy war on behalf of utilities was launched because the consumers’ counsel was effective at reducing utility bills in Ohio.”
— Editorial, Cleveland Plain Dealer
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 NEW YORK, NY — “After burning coal to light up Cincinnati for six decades, the Walter C. Beckjord Generating Station will go dark soon—a fate that will be shared by dozens of aging coal-fired power plants across the U.S. in coming years.
Their owners cite a raft of new air-pollution regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency, including a rule released Wednesday that limits mercury and other emissions, for the shut-downs.
But energy experts say there is an even bigger reason coal plants are losing out: cheap and abundant natural gas, which is booming thanks to a surge in production from shale-rock formations in the U.S.
‘Inexpensive natural gas is the biggest threat to coal,’ says Jone-Lin Wang, head of global power research for IHS CERA, a research company. ‘Nothing else even comes close.’
…Some of the soon-to-be-defunct plants have been operating only sporadically because they are old, inefficient and expensive to operate; Duke Energy Corp.’s Beckjord plant in Ohio, for example, didn’t even run three of its six generating units in 2010.
Market and regulatory forces are “sounding a death knell for many an older coal-fired power plant,” says Hugh Wynne, senior research analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.”
— Rebecca Smith, Wall Street Journal
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 An employee walks past a giant wall of mined lignite, or brown coal, at Vattenfall AB's Jaenschwalde open coal mine in Cottbus, Germany. Source: Photographer by Michele Tantussi/Bloomberg NEW YORK, NY — “Germany is Europe’s bellwether for renewable energy. It is both the largest EU economy and its largest single investor in renewable energy. Germany will absorb almost a third of all EU renewable energy investment to 2030. The nation’s energy push is encouraged by feed-in tariffs, which are payments to organizations that generate electricity from renewable sources and feed it back to the power grid.
As Germany goes, so goes the EU. While not as far along as Germany, the rest of the EU has the most aggressive goals for renewable energy of any country or economic bloc in the world: 20 percent of final energy consumption by 2020. Germany is there already. The EU is on track to exceed its own directive of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance analysis, with most of the decline in fossil fuel generation coming from coal plant retirements. By 2030, we predict that renewable energy and large hydro will be 45 percent of the energy mix in the EU-27. Coal will be barely more than 10 percent, forced down as more renewables and natural gas power plants are built and carbon emissions standards tighten.
The power industry plans in decades, not years. The German numbers released last week should be read in that context. Coal, despite multibillion-dollar new builds like RWE’s, is on its way out.
— Nathaniel Bullard, Bloomberg News
 Columbus-based American Electric Power has said it will need to spend $8 billion and close all or part of 11 coal-fired plants, eliminating 600 jobs in the wake of new federal clean-air rules. The Muskingum River Power Plant at Beverly in Washington County with its 160 workers will be on the closure list. (Bob DeMay/Akron Beacon Journal) AKRON — “Columbus-based American Electric Power has said it will need to spend $8 billion and close all or part of 11 coal-fired plants, eliminating 600 jobs. Early casualties are the Muskingum River Power Plant at Beverly in Washington County with its 160 workers, the company said. Parts of two other Ohio plants, in Lockbourne and Conesville, also will be shut down.”
— Bob Downing, Akron Beacon Journal
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NEW YORK, NY — “The EPA said some 60% of the 1,400 affected coal- and oil-fired generating units already complied with the rule. Many power companies, including Exelon Corp. and Calpine Corp., support the rules because they rely less on coal-burning generation. Others have already retrofitted plants to comply with state regulations. One of those firms— Constellation Energy Group Inc.—spent $885 million over three years to retrofit its Brandon Shores plant in Maryland, said Paul Allen, the company’s chief environmental officer. ‘When you’ve invested a lot of money and when you’re complying with strict rules as we have in Maryland, it doesn’t come as a surprise that you believe other companies should shoulder their share,’ Mr. Allen said.”
— Ryan Tracy and Deborah Solomon, Wall Street Journal
 A chemical plant looms behind a swing set in Houston. Pat Sullivan/AP Paint-eating pollution
WASHINGTON, DC — “Middletown, Ohio, has lived under the cloud of AK Steel for nearly a century. The largest employer in the Ohio town 40 miles north of Cincinnati, AK Steel has for decades pumped out pollution that takes the paint off residents’ cars and settles in their siding, some say.
‘It got into people’s gardens, and kids playing in the yard would come in with their feet black from the soot,’ said longtime resident Rachael Belz.
In 2000, the Department of Justice sued AK Steel over violations of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency joined the suit, which settled out of court and required the company to clean up Dicks Creek, which runs between the facility and a neighboring school. AK Steel committed to $66 million in pollution-control upgrades.
The facility remains on the EPA’s Clean Air Act watch list, and some say problems linger. ‘We still have soot in our house,’ said Belz, who suffers from asthma. ‘You can’t sit outside on your porch for more than 10 to 15 minutes without crap flying into your coffee.’
An AK Steel spokesman said the company does not know why it is on the watch list and has complied with regulations. He declined further comment.
During the civil case, residents launched a campaign to pressure the company to meet its promises. Elected officials, community organizer Belz said, made themselves scarce.
But politicians, from the city council to the governor’s office to U.S. Rep. John Boehner – a regular beneficiary of AK Steel contributions – were on hand to cheer the company’s 2010 expansion plan. Boehner did not reply to interview requests.
‘We do our campaigns in part,’ Belz said, ‘because we can’t count on our politicians.’”
— Ronnie Greene, Chris Hamby and Jim Morris, iwatch news
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 COLERAIN TOWNSHIP — In a brief filed yesterday in the Supreme Court of Ohio, Colerain Township laid out its latest arguments against the claim made by owners of the Rumpke Sanitary Landfill that it is a public utility. Rumpke’s claim rests on three arguments: 1) the essential nature of solid waste collection services; 2) the regional monopoly Rumpke has on providing those services and 3) its promise that it will stay open and provide those services. The township counters by saying that since privately owned landfills are not obliged by law to provide service, set rates in public hearings or offer uniform rates and service based on cost, they do not fit the definition of a public utility set by the Supreme Court of Ohio in previous case law.
The township further argues conditions do exist to declare as public utilities Ohio’s solid waste management districts, which were created to “reduce reliance on landfills for solid waste management”. The Hamilton County Solid Waste Management District, which oversees activity at Rumpke’s landfill, has adopted an open-market solid waste management plan, in which no single landfill is more important than any other. When Rumpke asked the District to “designate” its landfill and support their expansion proposal, the District declined. Attorneys for Colerain Township assert that this effort was an attempt to bring the landfill under the District’s public utility umbrella.
The Supreme Court of Ohio announced in July that it would hear Colerain Township’s final appeal of Rumpke’s designation as a public utility. No date has yet been set.
— Melissa K. English, Development Director, Ohio Citizen Action
 Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director, Ohio Citizen Action CLEVELAND — “Today’s U.S. EPA decision to enact strong standards to crack down on mercury pollution will provoke an avalanche of coal plant closings across the country, 30 to 60 according to an Associated Press analysis. In turn, Americans will breathe cleaner air and live healthier lives. Thanks and congratulations are due to the countless citizens who wrote a letter, made a phone call, hosted a house meeting, spoke at a community meeting, or buttonholed a public official.
Locally, of course, the decision may well lead to the closings of FirstEnergy’s lake plants, already pegged by the utility as ‘at risk’ for ‘potential retirement.’ These relics include the Bay Shore, Lake Shore, Eastlake and Ashtabula coal plants. Their days are numbered.”
— Sandy Buchanan, Executive Director, Ohio Citizen Action
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Letters supporting the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act 7,672 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and made personal phone calls urging state legislators to support the Fracking Emergency Medical Right to Know Act as of May 14, 2013.
Ohio coal-fired power plants
Resources on proposed Cleveland incinerator
AEP’s Muskingum River Power Plant
Letters to American Electric Power 989 neighbors have sent handwritten letters urging AEP to retire its Muskingum River coal plant as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Duke Energy 2,307 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and telewires urging Duke Energy to retire Miami Fort Unit 6 and Beckjord coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Letters to Kokosing Asphalt 8,709 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Kokosing Asphalt to be a good neighbor as of February 25, 2011.
Letters to Rumpke 9,205 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging Rumpke to be a good neighbor as of April 15, 2011.
Letters to FirstEnergy 3,914 neighbors have sent handwritten letters and petitions urging FirstEnergy to retire their four Lake Erie coal plants as of July 15, 2011.
Mountaintop removal coal mining
Letters to Senator Sherrod Brown and Senator Rob Portman 6,615 members have sent handwritten letters and petitions to Senator Brown urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
3,751 members have petitioned Senator Portman urging him to support US EPA rules that will protect our health from polluting coal plants as of January 24, 2012.
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