Rep. Walz filed another, more credible, letter with PUC, but…
March 15th, 2018
Remember when Rep. Tim Walz filed a letter with PUC claiming that Invenergy’s Melville Nickerson in Chicago was his constituent?
Today, he’s filed another, and it’s much better, BUT it doesn’t undo his dissing of his constituents in the 1st Congressional District. Claiming a “CLERICAL ERROR,” noooo, not quite, not even close:
Yeah, that earlier one is a hard one to forget:
Invenergy’s Melville Nickerson in Chicago was his constituent, and the folks on the ground in Freeborn County are. Are we clear on that? Much better… well, an improvement. Is Walz paying attention to his constituents!?!?!
tRump’s latest survey!
March 11th, 2018
tRump’s latest email survey (which as always is followed by an ask, presumably to pay his mounting legal bills). I love to give him a piece of my mind, but what I don’t understand is why they keep me on the list. The money begging emails are daily, sometimes twice daily. Heard he was hiring impeachment counsel, has that happened?
Who would give money to this grifter? DOH!
HERE’S A LINK TO THE SURVEY!
Listening to America 2018
Pipeline shut down in PA
March 8th, 2018
Look at those nice calm colors that make this look so innocuous… GUESS AGAIN!
The Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission has ordered the Mariner East Pipeline Project shut down.
PUC orders Sunoco pipeline shutdown after sinkholes expose bare pipe near Exton
Here’s the project site:
And PA site:
Mariner East II – PA DEP – PA.gov
And a photo of the sinkhole site, right in the middle of a neighborhood:
And another:
PA Environmental Daily Blog – fair use
And it’s “Energy Transfer Partners” on this one:
Coal Ash rule gutting open for comment
March 8th, 2018
Coal ash, remember that big impoundment release, photo above, not all that long ago?
Good grief, it was a DECADE ago, and it’s still a mess. From the EPA page:
And another ash impoundment failure, our friends at Duke Energy, from EPA page:
EPA’s response to the Duke Energy coal ash spill in Eden, NC
It’s an issue in Minnesota too:
Who cares? Well, once a rule is proposed, there’s not much variation, because if there is, then it has to start all over again and go through this process. This is proposed to “amend” the 2015 final rule, so it can’t be good. Speak up NOW! Go to EPA’s Regulations.gov and make Comments under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2017-0286 — open for 45 days after the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, which is/was when? Figure it’s published NOW, and just do it.
From the EPA’s site, here’s the rule proposed to gut the 2015 final rule, because gutting regulation, that’s what this administration does:
And here’s the poop cut and pasted direct from the source:
Proposed Amendments to the National Regulations (Phase One)
On March 1, 2018, EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, signed the first of two rules that proposes to amend the April 2015 final rule. The proposal:
- Addresses provisions of the final rule that were remanded back to the Agency on June 14, 2016 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit;
- Provides states with approved CCR permit programs (or EPA where it is the permitting authority) under the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation (WIIN) Act the ability to set certain alternative performance standards; and
- Addresses one additional issue that has arisen since the April 2015 publication of the final rule.
EPA is proposing six provisions that would allow states or EPA the ability to incorporate flexibilities into their coal ash permit programs. These flexibilities would also be available to facilities with U.S. EPA-issued CCR permits.
Additionally, the proposal:
- Clarifies the type and magnitude of non-groundwater releases that would require a facility to comply with some or all of the corrective action procedures set forth in title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) in sections 257.96 through 257.98 in meeting their obligation to clean up the release.
- Adds boron to the list of constituents in Appendix IV of 40 CFR part 257 that trigger corrective action.
- Determines the requirement for proper height of woody and grassy vegetation for slope protection.
- Revises the current regulations to allow the use of CCR in the construction of final cover systems for CCR units closing pursuant to 40 CFR section 257.101 that are closing with waste-in-place.
- Adds a new paragraph to 40 CFR section 257.103 to allow facilities to qualify for the alternative closure provisions based on the continued need to manage non-CCR wastestreams in the unit.
EPA will be accepting written comments on this proposal through Regulations.gov under Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OLEM-2017-0286 for 45 days after the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register.
Additionally, EPA will hold a hearing on this proposed rule. Additional information about the hearing will be posted in the docket for this proposal and on this website in the near future.
And more, cut and pasted from EPA:
Failure of “clean coal” in The Guardian
March 2nd, 2018
Yes, we know it doesn’t work. Learned that in stopping the Mesaba Project:
There were IGCC – coal gasification – plants proposed all over the country, and they fell, one by one. Some not fast enough, the Kemper project, in today’s Guardian, is an example of protracted misrepresentations to keep that money coming in to fund the scam:
The best thing that came from the failed Mesaba Project was the information about the technology that hadn’t been disclosed before. We were able to use this information all over the country to stop these plants, and stop this one before Minnesotans were utterly and hopelessly screwed as they were in Mississippi with Southern’s Kemper and Indiana with Duke’s Edwardsport. Read the rest of this entry »