Power Plant Mercury Emissions Poisoning the Great Lakes. By Climate Guest Contributor on June 8, 2012 at 11:17 am "Power Plant Mercury Emissions Poisoning the Great Lakes" Swanksalot, via Flickr by Thom Cmar, via NRDC’s Switchboard This week we released a report, Poisoning the Great Lakes: Mercury Emissions from Coal Fired Power Plants in the Great Lakes Region, which highlights the impacts of mercury emissions from Great Lakes power plants on the people, fish, birds, and wildlife of our region.
EPA recently issued new nationwide Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that require power plants to cut their mercury emissions by 90% on average, as well as to make similar cuts to their emissions of arsenic, lead, acid gases, and other toxic air pollution. Our report focuses on the 144 coal-fired power plants in the Great Lakes region, and names the 25 worst emitters, which were responsible for putting over 7,000 pounds of mercury into the air in 2010. Mercury is a dangerous brain poison that doesn’t belong in our Great Lakes. Dirty Business. The year of Blankenship comes to an end. The ousting of Don Blankenship from his position as CEO of Massey Coal at first glance appears like the toppling of an icon of "old-coal.
" But there may be cooler calculations at play, according to Jeff Goodell, author of the recent profile of Massey in Rolling Stone, Goodell's scathing portrayal of the embattled, highly divisive West Virginia coal executive, The Dark Lord of Coal Country, was published one week prior to his surprise resignation on December 3 after pressure from the company's board of directors. In his article, Goodell, a consulting reporter on the documentary Dirty Business, chronicles the myriad misdeeds committed during Blankenship's nearly two-decade reign as West Virginia's "undisputed king of coal.
" Blankenship directed Massey with brutal efficiency, Goodell writes, developing a reputation for crushing rivals, busting unions, and lavish spending to purchase political influence. Coal mining communities in Appalachia will forgive a lot of things, Goodell notes. The Dark Lord of Coal Country. After a Strong Counterattack, Big Coal Makes a Comeback by Jeff Goodell. 09 Nov 2010: Opinion by jeff goodell The coal industry — perhaps the least entrepreneurial, most politically-connected business in America — likes to present itself as a hapless collection of hard-working guys just trying to keep the lights on.
In the run-up to last week’s election, the industry skillfully played up the idea that it was under siege by out-of-control federal bureaucrats, including a president unsympathetic to the idea that burning more coal is the surest route to a healthy economy. In the weeks before the election, I saw banners in several West Virginia towns that said “Stop the War on Coal” and, my favorite, “Legalize Coal.” Luke Popovich, a spokesperson for the National Mining Association, went so far as to accuse the Obama administration of carrying out a “regulatory jihad” against coal.
Of course, the idea that the Obama administration is on a mission to kill coal would strike many energy and environmental activists as something like the inverse of the truth.