by The Associated Press

The Associated Press

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A coalition that includes Fortune 500 companies, labor unions and nonprofit foundations plans to spend the next five years focused on rescuing a West Virginia school district, one of the country's most downtrodden, state education officials learned Thursday.
McDowell County is the target of a public-private sector campaign that its organizers consider the first of its kind. They aim to turn around the county's underperforming schools by also tackling such related problems as poverty, substance abuse and outdated infrastructure.

By George Russell

Published December 19, 2011

FoxNews.com

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to change how it analyzes problems and makes decisions, in a way that will give it vastly expanded power to regulate businesses, communities and ecosystems in the name of “sustainable development,” the centerpiece of a global United Nations conference slated for Rio de Janeiro next June.

The major focus of the EPA thinking is a weighty study the agency commissioned last year from the National Academies of Science. Published in August, the study, entitled “Sustainability and the U.S. EPA,” cost nearly $700,000 and involved a team of a dozen outside experts and about half as many National Academies staff.

Its aim: how to integrate sustainability “as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of EPA.” The panel who wrote the study declares part of its job to be “providing guidance to EPA on how it might implement its existing statutory authority to contribute more fully to a more sustainable-development trajectory for the United States.”

Or, in other words, how to use existing laws to new ends.

By The Associated Press
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- More than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey. 

Together, those plants -- some of the oldest and dirtiest in the country -- produce enough electricity for more than 22 million households, the AP survey found. But their demise probably won't cause homes to go dark.

The fallout will be most acute for the towns where power plant smokestacks long have cast a shadow. Tax revenues and jobs will be lost, and investments in new power plants and pollution controls probably will raise electric bills.

The survey, based on interviews with 55 power plant operators and on the Environmental Protection

Agency's own prediction of power plant retirements, rebuts claims by critics of the regulations and some electric power producers.

Gabriel Nelson, E&E Reporter

The largest lobbying group for the coal industry is spoiling for a fight with Chesapeake Energy Corp., which bills itself as the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer, over the company's funding of a push for tougher air pollution rules.

Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake has given money to the American Lung Association to help fund the "Fighting for Air" campaign, according to past statements by Chesapeake and the ALA's most recent annual report. The health group is now running a nationwide advertising campaign, built around an image of a baby in a bright-red stroller coughing in front of a polluting power plant, to call for tougher air quality regulations.

Handcrafted elephant, donkey presented during Senate gift exchange

by Jared Hunt

Daily Mail Capitol Reporter

Charleston Daily Mail

CHARLESTON, W.Va.-- While traditionally seen as a bad thing, Sen. Joe Manchin was happy to both give and receive lumps of coal in a holiday gift exchange with his fellow U.S. senators Monday evening.

His gift of West Virginia coal to fellow Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ended up being the most talked-about gift of the party.