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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: Draft of Air Rule is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 08-22-2003 01:19 PM
A VICTORY FOR INDUSTRY
E.P.A. Would Allow Upgrades Without Requiring Devices to Control Emissions
August 22, 2003
Draft of Air Rule Is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 — After more than two years of internal deliberation and intense pressure from industry, the Bush administration has settled on a regulation that would allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices, according to those involved in the deliberations.
The new rule, a draft of which was made available to The New York Times by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, would constitute a sweeping and cost-saving victory for industries, exempting thousands of indus trial plants and refineries from part of the Clean Air Act. The acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency could sign the new rule as soon as next week, administration officials have told utility representatives.
The exemption would let industrial plants continue to emit hundreds of thousands of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere and could save the companies millions, if not billions, of dollars in pollution equipment costs, even if they increase the amounts of pollutants they emit.
The action could also spare Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, if he is confirmed as the new E.P.A. administrator, from having to make a decision on a highly contentious issue.
[Report continues on link below:]
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/national/22AIR.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
See Also:
Blackout Is Just Latest Woe For a Troubled Ohio Utility
by James Dao with Eric Lipton:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/22/national/22ENER.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 08-24-2003 04:18 PM
quote:
Is it worth the cost of even cheaper gas to have
Ever increasing illnesses and deaths due to asthma, emphysema and other diseases?
Arguement doesn't hold...life-expectancy has been continually rising...in fact due to our ability to extend human life beyond its natural design, we see the greater suffering of old age as parts simply wear out. In fact, if you were to clean the planet and eliminate power plants, you'd be amazed at how people would start passing away due to heat-stroke, (no AC without a lot of EPA no-nos), no radio not a lot of things...one has to draw the line...are we better off, as a whole, with the technology we have developed versus without it...the Enviro-wackos seem to think it is possible both ways...it isn't. This is not to say one shouldn't protect the environment but it does mean you can't have a zero-tolerance towards it as if it can't self-heal.
quote:
Destruction of our forests caused by acid rain?
Arguement doesn't hold...there are plenty of forests, like the rest of our changing planet...they come and they go...drive around the USA...see how many forests there actually are...being near a metropolitan area may cloud ones views as to just how many rual and forested places there are.
quote:
Decimation of species in our waterways?
Arguement doesn't hold...species have continually come and gone the world has always worked by the survial of the fittest...physical and/or mental. One of the cleanest methods of power generation is via dams...however it does have an impact on the water ways and those that use them. There is no "free" in the world when you do one thing, it, in some way, will affect all others.
quote:
Besides, do you really believe the "cheaper gas" argument has any validity?
Self answered...we have the cheapest gas per population that doesn't seem to fit the supply and demand model. So any arquement to the contrary flies in the face of facts
quote:
And where are the "savings" to pay the increased medical and funeral expenses of those affected by the ash, acid and heavy
metals polution?
The savings for ones medical expenses, what ever they be, should come from the individual who has been afforded the lowest cost of living and the highest living standards through an ever expanding and plentiful work place. The individual should be saving a portion of their money for such things, just like retirement. If people wouldn't worry about suing everything in site for their own short comings such items as medical expenses wouldn't be so high...it isn't the doctors, it is the trial lawyers in the Tort category that just make everything someone elses fault.
quote:
AND NOW FOR TODAY'S COOL SITE
A.K.A Left-wing propoganda that is part of the problem not the solution.
Steve
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 08-24-2003 06:16 PM
I see the children brought to my wife's pediatric office
struggling to breathe in asthmatic attacks in ever-increasing
numbers. To do nothing because diseases come and go is a denial
not only of the hippocratic oath but of any measure of humanity,
it seems to me.
And I see the gas-guzzling, inefficient, polluting trucks rapidly replacing cars because they provide more profit for the makers and sellers. They call them by fancy names or initialese,
but being built on truck chassis they are permitted exemption from the pollution curbs of Cleaner Air regulation.
Lead contamination and its harmful effects on children's growth, brains and nervous systems declined sharply when government responded by outlawing lead-based paints and lead gasoline additives. But lead and other heavy-metals toxicity
is rising sharply again because of increased smokestack pollution from power plants and incinerators, from airborn and water precipitation, as with mercury in many varieties of fish.
The Adirondack Mountains forests, set aside for the nation by Theodore Roosevelt, are experiencing severe damage from acid rain caused by sulphurous gasses emitted from smokestacks in the Mid-West, emitted in grossly increased amounts as deregulation permits burning inferior coal and delays the installation of
pollution trapping filter systems which could diminish acid and heavy metal toxicity. The conifers are dying from the mountaintops down, and those merely weakened succomb to insect infestation. This is happening throughout the Northeast, following the path of the polluted prevailing winds.
We don't have "plenty of Forests"--there are only two in New York State. And I don't know that forests "come and go"--those destroyed by our mismanagement and greed are gone, period. Any view of the historical maps reveals a constant and accellerated shrinkage of forested land in the U.S.
This is not "nature's way" but man-made disaster.
We take action against killer snails in the Great Lakes, killer bees in Texas and other imported pests, but the mercury
in our seafood is man-made, owing to improper disposal of industrial wastes and sewage in our rivers and streams. Should we not take action to clean up our wastes? (Even my cats bury their waste--homo sapiens can do more.)
Action taken against polluters along the Hudson River has brought back the shad runs of yesteryear--not seen for two generations--and the cleaner water has revived species of flora and some are planning a revival of beaches with swimming permitted in the forseeable future. Had New Yorkers done nothing, our harbor would be a stinking sewer instead. Yet the Long Island Sound is experiencing the near death of lobster fishing and the farming of oysters and clams, owing to in-fighting between states, political groups and developers.
The states that joined in class action lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers for deceptive advertising of a toxic product did so because the burden on the taxpayers of hospital care for emphysema victims threatened to bankrupt the states.
That the suits were successful is a tribute to citizen awareness and our judicial system. Proper governmental regulation and oversite, under the Clean Air provisions could benefit taxpayers and states similarly.
I found the Scorecard report on Queens County informative and to the extent of my knowledge, accurate. It seems to have been carefully researched. I don't see how the adjective "left-wing" applies, though the use of factual data to effect change may rightly be termed "propaganda," properly used.
[ 08-24-2003, 11:24 PM: Message edited by: Gerard S. Cohen ]
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 08-25-2003 02:35 AM
quote:
Is it worth the cost of even cheaper gas to have
Ever increasing illnesses and deaths due to asthma, emphysema and other diseases?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arguement doesn't hold...life-expectancy has been continually rising...
That's irrelevant - he was speaking of the correlation of increased respiratory illness to air pollution, which is correlated & positive. You can't just switch to another statistic which seems related.
quote:
Destruction of our forests caused by acid rain?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arguement doesn't hold...there are plenty of forests, like the rest of our changing planet
I can't believe this is the usually cast-iron Steve Guttage thought process. He said that there is deforestation as a result of acid rain, the fact that there are still forests is not a contradiction.
quote:
Decimation of species in our waterways?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arguement doesn't hold...species have continually come and gone the world has always worked by the survial of the fittest...physical and/or mental. One of the cleanest methods of power generation is via dams...however it does have an impact on the water ways and those that use them. There is no "free" in the world when you do one thing, it, in some way, will affect all others.
So there is no morality?
And there is no liability?
You go over to someone's house, you break their leg with a baseball bat, you tell them "People break their legs all the time, legs are easier to break than baseball bats, & people have broken other people's legs throughout all of man's history. There is nothing right or wrong with what I have done, I am not liable, that's the way of the world, etc."
I've got to say, Houston TX has become the world's foulest hole. I used to be sort of disinterested in other areas' environment, but that's changed since Houston became an airline hub. The air is brown, like the floor in a bathroom where the toilet has backed up. It's off-the-scale worse than urban areas like Chicago, New York, etc. Flying in to Houston, I saw a huge brown dead water body, & asked if that was the holding pond for a creosote plant. I was told ... 'umm, that's Lake Houston'.
You fly in, & it really looks like a cesspool. Brown, & nasty. Sometimes the worst air quality in the US, & the highest respiratory illness in the country. I wondered, "Why do these people want to live like this?", and the answer of course is most don't. But the ones who try to keep emissions down are just labelled environmental nuts. Excuse me, but the environmental nuts are the ones who want to foul their own nests & live in sh*t. And then the "labelers" tell the people living there who are trying to keep it from being turned to crap "if you don't like it, leave!" How do THOSE nazis think they own it? The other people who live there have just as much right to like their town, NOT to want it turned to crap, & NOT to leave.
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