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Kentucky Power Co-op Charged With New Source Review Crimes WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - The federal government is taking the East Kentucky Power Cooperative (EKPC) to court for alleged violations of the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review (NSR) provisions. The case is the first lawsuit against a power company brought by the Bush administration under the Clean Air Act, although investigation for the case was begun under President Bill Clinton.The New Source Review (NSR) section of the act requires that when power companies install equipment to increase generating capacity, providing a new source of power, they must obtain permits based on an environmental review or use the best available control technology to limit their emissions. Coal-fired power plants account for nearly 70 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions each year and 30 percent of nitrogen oxide emissions. The lawsuit was announced Wednesday in a joint statement from the Justice Department, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The government alleges the violations resulted from three “major modifications” to two EKPC coal-fired power plants done in the 1990s that increased coal consumption and emissions from its plants. The modifications were done without first obtaining NSR permits or installing the best available control technology, the government claims. The Spurlock Plant, located in Mason County, Kentucky, operates two coal-fired generating units, one of which is at issue in this case. The Dale Plant, located in Clark County, Kentucky operates four coal-fired generating units, two of which are at issue in the case. The complaint also charges EKPC with violations of the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards, operating permit requirements, and the Kentucky State Implementation Plan. “This shows that the EPA will continue to clean up coal-fired power plants,” said John Peter Suarez, outgoing assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. “Utilities that ignore their environmental responsibilities risk enforcement action.” On its website the East Kentucky Power Cooperative puts environmental responsibility front and center. "Emissions of both nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide have dropped sharply in recent years, while the total number of consumers served by EKPC's member cooperatives has increased sharply," the cooperative says. Some environmentalists see the EKPC case as an election year political move, given the fact that the EPA last year wrote a New Source Review loophole that would allow utilities, refineries, and factories to replace existing equipment without going through the New Source Review program if the cost of the replacement does not exceed 20 percent of the "process unit." A federal appeals court granted a stay of that rule on December 24, 2003 in an appeal brought by 14 states, the District of Columbia, numerous local governments, and six environmental organizations. Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust said, "This election year initiative also comes as Democratic presidential candidates ramp up their attacks on the Bush environmental policies." The new EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt who assumed the position after the loophole was written, gave an indication of how he view the controversial New Source Review provisions in a speech January 9 to the Edison Electric Institute Board of Directors in Phoenix, Arizona "No one knows how long it will take to fix the New Source Review rule," Leavitt said. "But even after the rulemaking issues are resolved, the enforcement cases themselves take years and there is no certainty for anyone in the result. Time is wasting and, while the lawyers tangle and the public relation firms spin, little is done to clean up the air." "Dirty power plants need to be cleaned up now, not a decade from now. And here's the reality: the power plants that are caught up in this stalemate of New Source Review enforcement actions will have to be cleaned up under the Interstate Air Quality Rule anyway," said Leavitt. "If we clean up the offending power plants, the New Source Review issues go away."
Bush Budgets $274 Million for Bio-Surveillance Program WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - A $274 million Bio-Surveillance Program Initiative intended to protect the nation against bioterrorism and strengthen the public health infrastructure is included in the Bush administration's fiscal year 2005 budget request to Congress. The measure is aimed at preventing or countering threats such as infectious disease and human exposures to chemicals and radiation.Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Thursday that the measure will "enhance on-going surveillance programs" in areas such as human health, hospital preparedness, state and local preparedness, vaccine research and procurement, animal health, food and agriculture safety and environmental monitoring - and integrate those efforts into one comprehensive system. Ridge said, "This initiative will enable us to build upon the success of the BioWatch Program, an important public health tool, which has been operating in more than 30 cities across the nation since 2003." The BioWatch system deploys environmental air samplers in key locations throughout each city. Filters from these air samples are routinely gathered and analyzed by public health laboratories to determine if a biological agent has been released into the air. The BioWatch project is led by the Department of Homeland Security with support from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control's Laboratory Response Network and state and local public health partners. If approved, the budget request would give the Department of Homeland Security $129 million to expand and upgrade the BioWatch Program and create a system to integrate a broad variety of surveillance data from across the government. "Better bio-surveillance will mean early detection and improved response to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies," said Thompson. "It is vital that we detect, monitor and treat any disease outbreak as quickly and efficiently as possible. This initiative will better integrate information to give us the tools we need to protect American families." Of the total request, $11 million would go to the Department of Homeland Security for development of a real-time system for gathering data on the health of the American human population, animals, plants, and the food supply. This information would be integrated with "environmental monitoring and intelligence data," Ridge said. The Health and Human Services Department would allocate $130 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to improve linkages between public health laboratories, and border health and quarantine stations. The number of public health quarantine stations at U.S. international airports servings and other U.S. ports of entry would increased from eight to a maximum of 25. The CDC would use the funds to apply automated analysis techniques to electronically available health related data. Public health, clinical, and private sector commercial lab capabilities would be expanded to provide timely and accurate diagnoses across the country, Thompson said. Five million dollars would to the Food and Drug Administration to help coordinate the agency's existing food surveillance capabilities, establish links with public health and environmental officials and integrate with the Department of Homeland Security's threat analysis system. The U.S. Agriculture Department would receive $10 million to improve food and animal surveillance conducted by the Food Safety and Inspection Services and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "These investments not only will better prepare the nation for and protect us from a bioterror attack, they also will better prepare us for any public health emergency," Thompson said. "We already have seen our investments pay off in CDC's leadership in fighting the SARS outbreak last year and through a coordinated public health response to the West Nile virus."
Energy Department Backs Away From Alternative Fuel Fleets WASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - The Department of Energy (DOE) Thursday declined to adopt a regulation requiring that owners and operators of certain private and local government fleets acquire alternative fueled vehicles.The DOE said its decision is based on its findings that such a requirement "would not appreciably increase the percentage of alternative fuel and replacement fuel used by motor vehicles in the United States" and would make "no more than a negligible contribution" to the achievement of the replacement fuel goals set forth in a 1992 Clinton era law known as EPAct. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct) was passed to reduce dependence on imported petroleum by requiring certain fleets to acquire alternative fuel vehicles, which are capable of operating on non-petroleum fuels. Some state and federal fleets are already subject to a similar requirement as part of EPAct, but the Energy Department decided a rule that applies to private and local government fleets is "not necessary'' within the meaning of EPAct. The private and local fleet requirement would have applied to certain fleets of 50 or more centrally fueled light duty vehicles. Alternative or replacement fuels are defined as - methanol, ethanol, or other alcohols, ethers, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, hydrogen, coal derived liquid fuels, biodiesel, electricity and solar power, or any other fuel that the Energy Secretary determines "is substantially not petroleum and would yield substantial energy security benefits and substantial environmental benefits.'' The decision not to require alternative fuel vehicles for private and local fleets disappointed environmental groups and local government officials that have already made alternative fuel vehicle purchases. In some cases, local governments were hoping the requirement would help drive down prices for alternative fuels they now use to power their vehicles. The Energy Department reasoned that EPAct imposes too many limitations on the department's authority to mandate alternative fuel vehicle acquisition in private and local government fleets. Such a rule would apply only to vehicles under 8,500 pounds, in large fleets located in certain cities, and could not apply to rental vehicles, emergency vehicles, and vehicles garaged at residences overnight. The DOE also points to the "numerous exemptions" available to fleet owners under EPAct. Each year, automakers are already manufacturing several times the number of alternative fuel vehicles that would be required under this program, the DOE said, and so a rule requiring private and local governments to acquire alternative fuel vehicles would not increase production or sales of the alternative vehicles at all, but would just change the identity of the buyers of the vehicles. Nor is there any assurance that a requirement to purchase alternative fuel vehicles would mean they would actually run on replacement fuel instead of gasoline. "EPAct does not give DOE authority to require that vehicles acquired by private and local government fleets use any particular fuel," the department said.
New York City School Bus Companies Agree Not to Idle NEW YORK, New York, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - Half the New York City students who take diesel school buses provided by the NYC Education Department will breathe cleaner air under a new agreement between the state and four school bus fleets to reduce idling. The deal settles violations of state and city idling laws by the four companies.An investigation by the New York State Attorney General's office found that the four school bus fleets – Atlantic Express, Pioneer Bus Company, Consolidated Bus Company, and Logan Bus Company – repeatedly violated state and city idling laws that limit the amount of time vehicles may idle when not in traffic. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer made the clean air announcement Thursday at PS 125 in Harlem. Joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, other elected officials and community advocates, Spitzer, said the action is designed to help combat an "epidemic of childhood asthma," a chronic inflammatory lung disease. "We're pleased to have crafted a settlement that will dramatically reduce air pollution from bus idling in New York City, and that will serve as a model for other school bus fleets," Spitzer said. The National Center for Health Statistics reported last year that 26.7 million Americans suffer from asthma. In 2000, children in New York City were almost twice as likely to be hospitalized for asthma as children in the United States as a whole. Minority and inner city populations are three times more likely to be affected than any other community. Regardless of city law that limits idling to three minutes, and state law that limits it to five minutes, the school buses often idled for long periods in front of schools and when the children were nearby waiting or loading and unloading. Emissions from diesel engines in trucks and buses contain pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and microscopic particles of soot that can lodge deep in a person's lungs. These pollutants have been linked to cancer, respiratory diseases, such as asthma, and other serious health conditions. Under the agreements, the four bus companies will:
Spitzer's office estimated that idling by the four school bus companies resulted in annual emissions of approximately 1.3 tons of particulate matter, 60 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 20 tons of carbon monoxide in the New York metropolitan region. The four companies operate over 60 percent of the 6,000 school buses that are contracted by the Department of Education. The attorney general's office cited a recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the University of California at Berkeley, "No Breathing in the Aisles," which found that levels of diesel pollution are up to eight times greater inside school buses than the average diesel exhaust levels in outside air. Three of the four companies agreed to cooperate with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) to install diesel exhaust filters on their buses to reduce harmful emissions. In 2001, the NYPA announced that it would provide $6 million to retrofit 1,000 New York City school buses with exhaust filters, but to date no retrofit projects have been completed. The exhaust filters, when combined with the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel, also funded by NYPA, will reduce emissions from the school buses by up to 90 percent. Public health, neighborhood, and environmental activists from New York City praised the agreements. Peggy Shepard, executive director of West Harlem Environmental Action, said, "Although they carry the most precious and the most vulnerable members of our society, yellow school buses remain some of the most toxic vehicles on the road today." "There is no reason for these buses to be idling outside schools or in parking lots, exposing children, drivers, and community residents to toxic diesel exhaust," Shepard said. "The agreement between the Attorney General's office and New York City school bus companies is an important step towards cleaning up dirty school buses and lessening their impact on children's health."
Firms Win Energy Grants for Idling Reduction Technologies GOLDEN, Colorado, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - Two private companies, Caterpillar Inc. and Schneider National Inc., have been awarded separate federal government grants to develop technologies that reduce truck idling. Truck idling consumes more than 800 million gallons of fuel each year, trucking industry experts estimate.The U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Vehicle Testing Activity will spend more than $550,000 on the grants, and the companies will contribute at least 50 percent of the cost of each project. Caterpillar, located in Peoria, Illinois, a producer of diesel and natural gas engines, received a grant to develop its MorElectric System that allows a trucker to plug in to the power grid or use an auxiliary power unit to drive engine accessories such as air conditioning when the driver is asleep at a truck stop. According to Caterpillar, the project will demonstrate the potential idle reduction benefits of the MorElectric technology for heating, ventilating, and cooling truck cabs in five test trucks. Caterpillar conducted on-road performance testing of MorElectric in 2003, and is doing field testing in the first quarter of 2004 to accumulate several million test miles. The MorElectric system will be introduced to the market in January 2005, the company says. The initial market entry product includes a heating, ventilation and air-conditioning module, an engine mounted belt driven 7 kW generator, and two idling reduction options: an auxiliary power unit and a shore power plug-in. “This is not just an add-on hardware approach. We have developed a highly integrated system specifically designed to meet the needs of the truck industry while minimizing weight and costs,” said Caterpillar's David Orr. Although the MorElectric system is produced by Cat Electronics, it is being sold independent of Caterpillar engines and can be installed on any truck and any engine. Schneider National, located in Green Bay, Wisconsin is North America's largest private truckload carrier. Founded in 1935, Schneider National currently operates 14,000 tractors, 40,000 trailers and has partnerships with over 6,000 carriers. Schneider covers more than five million loaded miles per day and is utilized by two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies. Schneider says it received the Energy Department grant for a project to demonstrate cab heating and cooling and engine-off technologies. The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Lab will oversee the grant projects.
Western Mountains Younger Than First Thought TUCSON, Arizona, January 29, 2004 (ENS) - Geologists say the Santa Catalina and Rincon mountains of the Western United States were not fully formed until some six million years agoThe study, which appears in the current issue of the "Geological Society of America Bulletin," rebuts the previous belief that the major activity that formed the mountains had occurred 20 million years ago. The team of University of Arizona researchers reports that movement along faults bordering what are now mountains let huge blocks of rock spring up about 9,000 feet into the air, creating Tucson's skyline. "Now other geoscientists in the western United States may look even harder at the relationships between the most recent faulting and what has existed before," said George Davis, the leader author of the study and a geosciences professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "The magnitude and the influence of the basin-and-range faulting will be a surprise to some people." Southern Arizona is part of what geologists call the "basin and range province," an area extending from southern Oregon to western Texas. The region was created when, about 15 million years ago, the Earth's crust was stretched, breaking into hundreds of blocks that form mountain ranges that run north to south. Davis explains that in the 1970s, the Santa Catalinas and Rincons, like 40 or 50 other mountains in the basin-and-range region, were considered "strange," because they did not fit into the categories of mountains that geologists already knew about. By 1993, Davis and his colleagues knew that 20 to 25 million years ago, movement along faults running under the Tucson valley floor had shifted rocks from about seven miles under the earth to the present site of the Rincon and Santa Catalina mountains. But those ancient movements would not have lifted the rocks high enough to create the tall mountain ranges that bracket Tucson today, the researchers report. They found that between 12 and 6 million years ago, the western portion of the Catalinas popped up "almost like opening a trap door" at the Pirate Fault. The raised edge of the trap door is now known as Mount Lemmon, at 9,157 feet the highest point in the Catalina range. They explain that the same thing happened at the Martinez Ranch Fault, with the leading edge of another trap door becoming the highest point in the Rincons - the 8,664-foot Mica Mountain. The rocks in Reddington Pass, the low spot between the two ranges, stayed in place, like the hinged side of a door. "It closes a big chapter in trying to describe the step by step by step movements that created the fundamental geometry and landscape we see in the Catalinas and the Rincons," Davis said. The researchers added that the finding also could help explain the evolution of other U.S. core-complex mountains, including the Bitterroot Mountains in Montana and the South Snake Range in Great Basin National Park in Nevada.
Mineral Gel Created by Earthquakes Can Increase Damage ARLINGTON, Virginia, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - Researchers have discovered a mineral gel that can be created when certain types of rocks abrade each other during an earthquake.They found that friction between rocks got progressively lower as the slip speed between them increased during a quake. This might happen between the tectonic plates on either side of an earthquake fault, for example. Scanning electron microscope images taken during controlled simulations of quakes suggest that mineral powder generated during the abrasion combines with water from the atmosphere to form a gel that lubricates the rock surfaces. If present in faults during a quake, the gel may reduce plate friction to nearly zero, resulting in larger energy releases that could cause more damage. Terry Tullis and David Goldsby of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and Giulio Di Toro of the University of Padova in Italy published their results in the January 29 issue of the journal "Nature." "One of the important processes that can occur during earthquakes is melting due to frictional heating, an extreme version of what happens when you rub your hands together to get them warm," Tullis explains. The low values of friction predicted by our study would explain the lower than expected amount of heat generated along some major faults like the San Andreas Fault during earthquakes," said Goldsby. Their work, funded by the National Science Foundation, and an Italian MURST grant, may be useful in predicting the effect of an earthquake on humans nearby. Tullis said, "Rocks rub against each other at about one meter per second during earthquakes. If it takes only a tenth of a second to get up to speed, then the acceleration is greater than the acceleration due to gravity that holds us onto the Earth. In that case, objects such as people and cars can be thrown in the air." The findings may make building quake-proof structures more understandable, and possibly cheaper. "It is much more expensive to construct a building, for example a nuclear reactor, that is designed to withstand higher earthquake accelerations," said Tullis. "Experiments and simulations to understand what we might expect are an important way to anticipate earthquake accelerations and thus permit us to build to reduce damage without expensive over-design."
Actress Halle Berry Urged to Forego Tiger Pet SILVER SPRING, Maryland, January 30, 2004 (ENS) - The Fund for Animals has sent a letter to Oscar winning actress Halle Berry who is filming "Catwoman" in Vancouver, British Columbia, urging the star not to turn a rare Bengal tiger from the set into her "personal pet.”Berry has been quoted as saying she wants to keep the tiger. The Fund warned that keeping tigers in captivity is cruel, and can be dangerous for people. “The love and admiration of a tiger is certainly understandable, they are majestic animals,” said Andi Bernat, program coordinator for The Fund for Animals. “However, when held in captivity, they are still wild and dangerous, and nothing will change that.” Hundreds of people have been killed or seriously injured as a result of captive tiger attacks. Recent victims include expert animal trainers, such as Roy Horn of the Las Vegas show Siegfried and Roy. There are an estimated 10,000 tigers in U.S. homes, twice as many as those that remain in the wild, Bernat says. As a result, many states and counties have made the private possession of tigers illegal, and last month the U.S. Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed The Captive Wildlife Safety Act, banning the interstate commerce in tigers and other big cats. In their natural habitat, tigers live in evergreen and monsoon forests and have large home ranges of up to 400 square miles. Tigers also have complex nutritional and emotional needs which, in captivity, require expensive and expert veterinary care. “Even those people who have the best of intentions ultimately expose captive tigers to inhumane conditions,” said Bernat. The Fund is asking Berry to show her appreciation for tigers in "safe and humane ways" such as assisting with habitat preservation or contributing to animal protection groups and accredited sanctuaries which help tigers. There are several experienced, accredited animal sanctuaries in the United States that care for tigers. The Fund is currently caring for 39 tigers rescued from a cruelty case that will soon go to a new 10 acre tiger habitat being constructed in northern California. Berry suffered a head injury on the set on Saturday, colliding with a piece of equipment during a running scene. She was treated at St. Paul's Hospital, released and was back at work Monday. She plays Patience Price, a scientist at a cosmetics company who transforms into Catwoman to take on her evil boss, played by Sharon Stone.
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