Oh. Too expensive, eh? Maybe all that money we're saving from #DOGE could go towards installing scrubbers or replacing them! (JK! #DOGESucks! #TaxTheRich!)
More Than 60 Power Plants Exempted From Federal #MercuryLimits
More stringent rules were scheduled to be enforced in 2027. Selected plants will now have two more years to comply.
By Dan Gearino
April 16, 2025
"Included in the #Trump administration’s order last week to boost the #coal industry was a two-year exemption to a rule that would have forced some of the nation’s most polluting power plants to reduce emissions of mercury and other air toxics.
"The ramifications of this exemption are beginning to sink in for people across the country who saw the mercury rule, updated and enhanced last year by the Biden administration, as a crucial part of reducing the harm of these power plants.
"The Environmental Protection Agency [#EPA] published a list of 47 plant owners and more than 60 plants that now have additional time to meet mercury and air toxics standards (MATS) that were set to become more stringent in 2027.
"The actions are part of a broader agenda in which the Trump administration aims to use executive orders to cut environmental regulations and increase electricity generation, mainly from #FossilFuels.
" 'The Trump administration has created an illegal special exemption by which polluters can go to the president and request a ‘get out of jail free’ card when it comes to the Clean Air Act,' said Howard Learner, CEO and executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a Chicago-based advocacy group that works throughout the Midwest. 'That’s legally irresponsible; it’s bad policy, and it will really harm people as a result of more pollution.'
"The exempted plants are in 23 states and include some of the country’s leading #polluters, such as the #JamesHMillerPlant in #Alabama, owned by Southern Co., and the #LabadiePlant in #Missouri, owned by #AmerenCorp.
"Many of the plants are old, such as the #TennesseeValleyAuthority’s #ShawneePlant in #Kentucky, whose oldest generating unit began operating in 1953.
"A few are relatively new, such as the #DryForkStation in #Wyoming, which opened in 2011 and is owned by #BasinElectric Power Cooperative.
"The list consists mostly of #CoalPlants, but also includes a few properties that burn #gas or #petroleum."
Read more:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16042025/power-plants-exempted-from-federal-mercury-limits/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/uocBf
#BadDOGE #AirIsLife #MercuryPoisoning
#ToxicAir #WaterIsLife #DirtyCoal #CoalMining #USPol #Pollution
#Arizona’s #ApacheGeneratingStation is one of 66 #CoalPlants to get #EPA exemption from Biden-era #toxic #AirPollution caps
Sammy Travis / Cronkite News
April 21, 2025
"WASHINGTON — The Apache Generating Station, one of the last remaining power plants in Arizona that use coal, is among 66 power plants nationwide granted exemptions by the Trump administration from updated standards on mercury, arsenic, lead and other toxic pollutants.
Environmentalists worry that allowing plants to avoid compliance with the new standards could harm air quality, public health and the environment.
Power companies have been phasing out coal plants in Arizona for years. The last is targeted for closure in 2032, when federal rules kick in that require 90% capture of carbon emissions.
But Arizona’s intense summer heat puts a strain on the supply of electricity, and power companies have long turned to older, dirtier technology when demand peaks.
At issue are Environmental Protection Agency standards known as the MATS rule, part of the Clean Air Act, which President Richard Nixon signed in 1970. Congress updated it in 1977 and 1990.
The Apache Generating Station’s waiver allows its owner and operator, Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, to comply with the 2012 version of the federal standards rather than stricter caps issued by the EPA in April 2024.
The MATS rule was originally aimed at coal-burning plants. The EPA has expanded it to apply to natural gas; Apache, a 408-megawatt plant about 80 miles east of Tucson, uses both.
Natural gas generates far less toxic material and particulate matter than coal. But it does create carbon dioxide, and the Biden administration also issued rules aimed at curbing those greenhouse emissions.
[Next section talks about how UPGRADES ARE EXPENSIVE! THEN HAVE BILLIONAIRES PAY FOR THEM! OR REPLACEMENT ENERGY SOURCES!]
"President Donald Trump signed an order shortly after taking office that rolled back Biden-era EPA regulations. In April, he signed multiple executive orders promoting coal.
"His cost-cutting effort, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has also aggressively curtailed the EPA’s staff and mission."
#BadDOGE #AirIsLife #MercuryPoisoning #ToxicAir #WaterIsLife #DirtyCoal #CoalMining #USPol
The Apache Generating Station, an Arizona power plant that uses coal, received an EPA exemption from Biden-era standards on toxic air pollution. President Donald Trump loosened regulations and 66 plants nationwide received exemptions. Most power companies are phasing out coal by 2032, though that could change if Trump eases carbon emission standards.
#FYI #PaulBeckwith video lecture and literature review #mercury #mercurypoisoning #NOAA #DOGE
"...mercury gets into the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) where it spreads around the planet ... "
"...disturbing news reports on DOGE going into NOAA. The Agenda 2025 report argues that NOAA should be broken up...."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKiMTPQMdTI
#climate #ClimateScience #climatechange #ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #ClimateBreakdown #climatecatastrophe #globalWarming #globalHeating #ExtremeWeather
Northern Ontario site selected for #NuclearWaste underground repository
A region in northern Ontario was chosen Thursday as the site to hold Canada's nuclear waste in a deep geological repository, a critical milestone in a $26-billion, decades-long project to bury millions of used fuel bundles underground.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
Nov 28, 2024
"The site selection process began in 2010 with 22 potential locations and was eventually narrowed down to two finalists in Ontario. Both #Ignace and #WabigoonLakeOjibwayNation in northern Ontario decided to move ahead, while the 'yes' side narrowly won in a referendum in the Municipality of South Bruce.
"But nearby #SaugeenOjibwayNation had not made a decision, and the #NWMO had a timeline of selecting a site by the end of this year.
"'We've been working with Saugeen Ojibway Nation for many years, and despite our best efforts, we did not see a path forward where Saugeen would be in a position to determine their willingness in the short, probably the mid-term,' Swami said.
"Chief Clayton Wetelainen of Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation said his community's role as the potential host for Canada’s used nuclear fuel is one of the most important responsibilities of our time.
"'We can not ignore this challenge and allow it to become a burden for future generations,' he wrote in a statement.
"The First Nation will ensure that its role as guardians of the land and water remains central to the decision-making process, Wetelainen and the council said, and the project can only continue if it can be proven to be built safely, with respect to the environment and in a way that protects Anishinaabe values.
"But #GrassyNarrowsFirstNation, also in northwestern Ontario, is upset with the decision. Grassy Narrows is grappling with generations of #MercuryPoisoning after a mill in Dryden dumped 9,000 kilograms of the substance into the English-Wabigoon River system in the 1960s.
"'This decision puts the people of Grassy Narrows in grave danger,' Joseph Fobister, Grassy Narrows' land protection team lead, said in a statement.
"'The transport of extremely dangerous nuclear waste and its disposal within our #watershed will do irreparable destruction to our lands, rivers, and our way of life, which have already been damaged by so many harmful decisions imposed on us.'"
https://www.burnabynow.com/indigenous-news/northern-ontario-site-selected-for-nuclear-waste-underground-repository-9877055
#NuclearWaste #Canada #FirstNations
TORONTO — A region in northern Ontario was chosen Thursday as the site to hold Canada's nuclear waste in a deep geological repository, a critical milestone in a $26-billion, decades-long project to bury millions of used fuel bundles underground.
#Permafrost Thaw May Cause #Arctic River Erosion to Speed Up
October 09, 2024
"Permafrost, the thick layer of perennially frozen ground that covers much of the Arctic, slows down the migration of Arctic rivers, according to a new Caltech study. River migration is a common process in which a river's path meanders over time due to erosion of the riverbanks. This rerouting, which can also occur in #SuddenFloods, poses a threat for many communities that live along and depend on rivers. The findings also have implications for how the Arctic region will be impacted by a warming climate as permafrost thaws over time.
"The research was conducted in the Caltech laboratory of Michael Lamb, professor of geology, and is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature on October 9.
"Led by graduate student Emily Geyman, the study focused on the #KoyukukRiver, a large tributary of the #YukonRiver that winds for hundreds of miles through interior Alaska. There was debate within the scientific community about whether the frozen soil along the riverbanks serves to fortify the banks against erosion or to promote it.
"'Large rivers like the Yukon or the Amazon can move tens to hundreds of feet per year,' Geyman says. "Arctic rivers in particular differ from temperate rivers because they need to thaw the material of their banks before they can pick that material up and move it.'
"Due to #ClimateChange, permafrost is slowly thawing over decades. But a river can experience drastic natural changes within a single year, with flow conditions changing from very cold and fast in early spring to warm and slow a few months later. Geyman and her collaborators leveraged these major changes that take place within a single season to gain a glimpse into how the rivers will behave in response to climate change decades or centuries into the future.
"In spring, the Koyukuk River swells in volume from snowmelt, flowing with fast, cold water. For more temperate rivers, a fast flow means more erosion. But in the Arctic, the temperature of the water matters—cold water is unable to thaw the frozen banks in order to migrate.
"In the new study, Geyman and her collaborators used satellite imagery of the Koyukuk over the past several years and developed a technique to decode high-resolution changes from the images. The team hypothesized that if permafrost was slowing the river's migration, they should only see migration later in the summer when the river water has warmed up. Their hypothesis matched with the satellite data, suggesting that permafrost does, in fact, slow down river migration.
"Next, the team compared sections of the river that flow through permafrost with those that do not. The Koyukuk is special because it traverses a patchwork of both permafrost and unfrozen ground. The team traveled to the Arctic to map the erosion on various bends of the river and found that sections without permafrost migrated twice as fast as analogous riverbends through permafrost terrain.
"The research is part of a larger effort to understand the dynamics of rivers and how they transport carbon, nutrients, and other materials trapped in the soil.
"'River migration has implications for local communities and infrastructure, and also for the Arctic environment,' Lamb says. 'About 1,500 gigatons of #carbon are stored in the frozen permafrost—about twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere, for comparison. There is also #mercury frozen in the soil that could be liberated into rivers as permafrost thaws. We are, ultimately, trying to understand what happens to these elements in the context of river erosion.'
"The work was a collaboration with local Alaska #Native communities, in particular from the town of #Huslia."
Read more:
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/permafrost-thaw-may-cause-arctic-river-erosion-to-speed-up
#GlobalWarming #PermafrostMelt #MercuryPoisoning #CarbonSinks #WaterIsLife #ClimateChange #Arctic #Alaska
‘We want the mill to shut down,’ #GrassyNarrows #FirstNation to #Ontario
After nearly 60 years of industrial poisoning, the northwest #Indigenous community continues to demand justice
September 17 2024
by Jon Thompson
"When members of #Asubpeeschoseewagong #Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows First Nation) and their supporters arrive at Queen’s Park this week, they’ll be calling for the #DrydenPulpAndPaper mill that’s been poisoning their water with #neurotoxins for nearly 60 years to permanently close.
"'We want everybody to be compensated, we want the mill to shut down, and we don’t want no #mining or #logging in our territory. We just want it all to stop,' says #ChrissyIsaacs, lead organizer of the caravan.
"Isaacs has been a staple of the annual #RiverRun demonstrations since they began in 2010. She was a leader among Grassy Narrows youths who blockaded #LoggingTrucks from entering the nearby #WhiskeyJackForest in 2002 and is currently travelling 1,900 kilometres to Toronto from her community near Ontario’s western border to protest the downriver effects of #methylmercury poisoning.
"Staff at the upstream #ReedPaperMill in #DrydenOntario, about 150 kilometres east of Grassy Narrows, dumped nearly 10 metric tonnes of #mercury into the #EnglishWabigoon River system in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mercury poisoned the #plants and #fish that the people of Grassy Narrows, and neighbouring #Wabaseemoong Independent Nation, were consuming.
"A half-century later, medical experts are finding that varying nervous and neurological health effects affect up to 90 per cent of Grassy Narrows residents.
Members of Grassy Narrows First Nation stopped to demonstrate outside of the Dryden mill before heading to Toronto for the annual River Run demonstration at Queen’s Park. There, they will call on the Ontario government to compensate the community for generations of industrial poisoning and call for the mill, now owned by First Quality Enterprises, to be shut down.
"The Grassy Narrows road blockade to prevent clear-cut logging and mining from happening in their traditional territories has stood for 22 years, and in that time Isaacs’s children have had children of their own. She says the conversation has never been transformed as much as it has this year.
"In May, scientific researchers released the revelation that #sulphate and organic matter in the #effluent that the mill is still releasing into the river is making methylmercury in the river system even worse, as opposed to diminishing over time as they were told."
#MercuryPoisoning #DirectAction #WaterIsLife #NativeAmericanNews #NativeAmericanActivism #InformedConsent #CanadaFirstNations
We Work The Black Seam
by #Sting
"This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
"It's hard for us to understand
We can't give up our jobs the way we should
"Our blood has stained the #coal
We tunneled deep inside the nations soul
"We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theory makes no sense
"One day in a #nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
"Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimey faces were never seen
Deadly for 12,000 years
Is #Carbon14
"We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together
"The seam lies underground
Three million years of pressure packed it down
"We walk through ancient forest lands
And light a thousand cities with our hands
"Your dark satanic mills
Have made redundant all our mining skills
"You can't exchange a six-inch band
For all the poisoned streams in cumberland
"One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
"Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimey faces were never seen
Deadly for 12,000 years
Is carbon 14
"We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together
"And should the children weep
The turning world will sing their souls to sleep
"When you have sunk without a trace
The universe will suck me into place
"One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
"Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimey faces were never seen
Deadly for 12,000 years
Is carbon 14
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together"
- Gordon Sumner, 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmC61VHVZAM
#CoalPower #CoalMining #UraniumMining #NoNukes #NuclearWaste #BlackSeam #AirPollution #MercuryPoisoning #Radiation #HumanFolly
Killer Rabbit 90
UselessFactsBadlyDrawn
Useless Facts, Badly Drawn
DoomsdaysCW
Ivi Choc
