Factbox: EPA's looming clean air rules | Reuters
Some items, perhaps of interest, from the link:
"* MERCURY, TOXIC POLLUTANTS FROM POWER PLANTS
The EPA finalized rules aimed at slashing mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants in December.The U.S. Midwest power grid operator has said this is the air rule that would close the most coal-fired power plants.
(We're working on the mercury thing. Like Carbon Dioxide, what mercury comes out of our Coal-fired power plants, in total, shrivels to insignificance compared to the mercury emitted, in total, by active volcanoes and related geothermal phenomena. And, there are potentially-benign solutions.)
2012:
* GREENHOUSE GAS LIMITS ON POWER PLANTS
The EPA's Gina McCarthy said the agency would roll out by the end of January limits on emissions blamed for warming the planet from new power plants. McCarthy said the agency has no plans in the near term to publish rules for power plants and oil refineries that are already in operation, and which put out the bulk of the emissions. Release of the plan has been delayed twice, in June and in September.
* GREENHOUSE GAS LIMITS ON REFINERIES
The EPA said this week it would miss a mid-December target of rolling out the first ever greenhouse gas limits on oil refineries. An EPA source said the rule will not be rolled out until after the power plants rule is proposed.
(Naturally, the oil refineries have gotten a pass. And, yes, some of them do emit a lot, really a lot, of CO2. Everyone, though, needs to start recognizing, and publicly discussing, the plain, incontrovertible fact that CO2 can be recycled.)
* FRACKING EMISSIONS
In October, the EPA delayed by a month finalizing standards on emissions from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations. The public comment period ended on November 30 and the rule will be finalized by April 3, 2012. They seek to cut emissions of volatile organic compounds that contribute to smog by nearly 25 percent across the oil and natural gas industry and by 95 percent from gas wells that use the technique of fracking.
(They really should be worried far, far more about ground water contamination from such fracking activities. And, when it comes to "fracking emissions", we're even uncertain what they mean, unless it's recognition of the fact, that, in some cases, after a gas formation has been fracked, Methane, a far more potent retainer of heat, a far worse "greenhouse" gas, than CO2, will come a bubblin' up through some folks' water wells, as we've documented for you.)
* COAL ASH
The EPA plans to determine this summer how to regulate coal ash, used in construction, but which can contain heavy metal and other toxic pollutants. In 2008, a massive retaining wall in Tennessee gave way and analysis of river water after the disaster showed elevated levels of pollutants that can cause birth defects."
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The "retaining wall in Tennessee" was not, genuinely, "coal ash, used in construction". It was, to put it plainly, a convenient dump for the power plant operator, who tried to put lipstick on it by calling it a "retaining wall".
Coal ash can be a valuable source of some otherwise domestically hard-to-get minerals and metals. Moreover, it can be consumed in the manufacture of cement and concrete; and, any nasty bits thus confined in that cement and concrete ain't gettin' out or going anywhere for the next few million years.
Further, Fly Ash cement and concrete are far more environmentally-benign and economical to make than conventional Portland cement, and, that aside from the fact that "waste" is being consumed.
Someone, somewhere, needs to start stuffing those facts in the EPA's box.