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DoI Judge Withdraws Peabody’s Permit on Black Mesa |
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Friday, 08 January 2010 00:08 |
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A Department of Interior (DoI) Administrative Law Judge withdrew Peabody Coal Co.’s Life of Mine permit for operations on Black Mesa, Ariz., handing a major victory to tribal and environmental organizations who appealed the permit decision in January. The permit had been granted on December 22, 2008, by the DoI’s Office of Surface Mining (OSM).
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CONSOL Energy Idles Fola Operations |
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Tuesday, 08 December 2009 00:06 |
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CONSOL Energy has issued notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) of a layoff at its Fola Operations near Bickmore, W.Va. It is expected that the layoffs will occur during February 2010. Approximately 104 workers at the Little Eagle Coal Co. and 378 at the Fola Coal Co. may be affected by the layoff.
CONSOL Energy attributed the idling at Fola Operations to the appeal of its approved permits to mine brought by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). Subsequent to that appeal, Judge Robert C. Chambers, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Huntington Division, recently issued an order suspending Fola Coal Clean Water Act Section 404 permit for the Ike Fork portions of Fola Operations effective January 23, 2009. Without this permit, neither Fola Coal nor Little Eagle Coal can satisfy the required specifications of its coal sales contracts.
“It’s unfortunate that, at a time when reliable and affordable energy is so desperately needed to reinvigorate our economy, that the nation’s energy industries are coming under repeated assault from nuisance lawsuits and appeals of environmental regulations,” said Nicholas J. DeIuliis, CONSOL Energy executive vice president and COO. “It is CONSOL Energy’s policy to operate our coal and gas assets safely and within the framework of the laws regulating our industry, but we oppose any efforts to use them to unnecessarily impede our ability to sustain our operations.
“To put it into human terms, we are talking about the jobs of nearly 500 of our employees at the Fola Operations, and the impact such legal interpretations will have on their quality of life and that of their families,” DeIuliis said, adding that for each job in coal mining, several additional support jobs are adversely affected.
In addition, DeIuliis said that the long-term economic viability of the Fola Operations remains uncertain due to adverse market conditions for the coal product mined there. “It’s challenging enough to operate our coal and gas assets in the current economic downturn without having to contend with a constant stream of activism in rehashing and reinterpreting permit applications that have already been approved or in the inequitable oversight of our operations,” DeIuliis said. “Customers will grow reluctant to deal with energy producers they perceive are unable to guarantee a reliable supply due to regulatory uncertainty. It inhibits the ability to remain competitive.”
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Progress Energy Will Retire Unscrubbed Coal Plants |
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Friday, 08 January 2010 00:06 |
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Progress Energy announced that by the end of 2017, the company intends to permanently shut down all of its remaining North Carolina coal-fired power plants that do not have flue-gas desulfurization controls.
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EPA Issues Endangerment Finding on GHGs |
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Tuesday, 08 December 2009 00:05 |
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After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. For the first time, the EPA pointed to GHG emissions from on-road vehicles as a major source in addition to coal-fired power plants.
GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, according to the EPA, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009’s place in history as the year when the U.S. Government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Business leaders, security experts, government officials, concerned citizens and the U.S. Supreme Court have called for enduring, pragmatic solutions to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that is causing climate change. This continues our work toward clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.”
The EPA’s final findings respond to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that GHGs fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants. The findings do not in and of themselves impose any emission reduction requirements but rather allow the EPA to finalize the GHG standards proposed earlier this year for new light-duty vehicles as part of the joint rulemaking with the Department of Transportation.
On-road vehicles contribute more than 23% of total U.S. GHG emissions, according to the agency. The EPA’s proposed GHG standards for light-duty vehicles, a subset of on-road vehicles, would reduce GHG emissions by nearly 950 million metric tons and conserve 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of model year 2012-2016 vehicles.
The EPA’s endangerment finding covers emissions of six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride—that have been the subject of scrutiny and intense analysis for decades by scientists in the United States and around the world.
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