EPA rules rolled back

[Rookie120 0]

I have a few questions. How are these plants killing that many people a year and where is the proof that that is what killed them and how do yopu know it was the plant and not the 3 packs of smoke the inhaled a day. On a lighter note I have a really simple solution to people being killed who live next to the power plant. DONT MOVE THERE!!!!!!!

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[billvon 3,111]

>How are these plants killing that many people a year . . .

Particulate pollution causing emphysema, pneumonia and lung cancer.

> and where is the proof that that is what killed them . . .

A good overview of the health risks:
http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Midwest_Sulfur.pdf

Evidence that two power plants in Massachusetts kill 159 people a year, from the Harvard School of Public Health:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press05042000.html

A report by Abt Associates, an EPA consultant, concludes that power plant particulate pollution kills more than 30,000 people a year in the US:
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/plant.htm

>and how do yopu know it was the plant and not the 3 packs of smoke the inhaled a day.

The field of study you are referring to is called "epidemiology." It allows doctors to determine the causes of death within a given population even when there are many possible causes.

[Rookie120 0]

So would you support building new power plants or upgrading to current one's?

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[jose 0]

Motion 2nd......

[wmw999 2,587]

Define arrogant, and define hypocrite.
If arrogant is someone who uses sarcasm and seems to talk down to you, there's plenty of that going around, and the brush goes way past people who are against pollution.

And if a hypocrite is someone who is against pollution, and doesn't live in a shack in the woods, well, such is life. The real environmentalist by that definition would immediately kill themselves to stop consuming anything. I realize you might think that's a good answer, but, it's probably not in the long run.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 3,111]

> So would you support building new power plants or upgrading to current one's?

New hydro or nuclear plants - definitely
New natural gas plants - not ideal, but if you need peaker plants, they're not bad.
New coal plants - definitely not. They just plain kill too many people.

Upgrading old power plants - every power plant out there should meet EPA regulations, period. If you have to upgrade them, so be it.

[Gawain 0]

Quote

> So would you support building new power plants or upgrading to current one's?

New hydro or nuclear plants - definitely
New natural gas plants - not ideal, but if you need peaker plants, they're not bad.
New coal plants - definitely not. They just plain kill too many people.

Upgrading old power plants - every power plant out there should meet EPA regulations, period. If you have to upgrade them, so be it.

All rational, and logical ideas. The problem is that it is the environmental activits (those more extreme than you Bill) that prevent such actions. We haven't built a new nuclear power plant in over 20 years. Organizations always place legal injunctions against such initiatives, even though long term environmental impacts are barely measurable.

Utility companies would love to build out more facilities. They receive heavy incentives for the capital expenditure, and they don't have to bend over backwards to adhere to EPA regulations in the process. Companies like Portland General, Edison Int'l have long term plans ready to go (pending regulatory review). Unfortunately, they involve either direct expansion or third-party contractual arrangements. The fact that many of these companies were severely affected by Enron is another factor. Achieving credit worthiness is also key, and when a lawsuit about a flower, or bug gets filed, investors, shareholders and bondholders lose interest fast, because they don't have "PC" on their side.

Do I care about clean water? Yes. Clean air? Yes. Do I care about the temporary displacement of short term theoretical habitat affects on the ground-hog in a dusty nowhere where building out the transmission grid is critical to ensure no repeat of the northeast blackout? No.

Do the injunctions that affect the proper, and diligent planning to ensure safe growth of our country and economy concern me more? Yes. Is there a balance to be found? Maybe -- but it is the extremists that must find acceptance in the fact that they use the very products and services that they oppose.

I would love to see an air quality measurement of the pollution the Hummer Dealership fires caused by ELF. I'd bet $100.00 that the fires caused more pollutants than the Hummers ever would have while in proper working order. Meanwhile, they cost how many jobs in the process?

So I try and I scream and I beg and I sigh
Just to prove I'm alive, and it's alright
'Cause tonight there's a way I'll make light of my treacherous life
Make light!

[jose 0]

If you cannot see those that are arrogant, hypocritical, and sarcastic then you are in true denial. There are many here that know exactly to whom I am referring.

If you are still lost, PM me and I'll enlighten you.

[Rookie120 0]

Let me make one example of the b.s. that a power company goes through to build a plant. Back in my home town in MIchigan there was a power plant that was going to be built in a industrial park area. The next thing you know all of the n.i.m.b.y.'s come out of nowhere and say they dont want a plant. To make a long story short it took 2 years and cost the power company over 3 million dollars in legal fee's to get all of the final permits and a shovel never even hit the dirt for that 3 mil. But it doesnt seem no matter where they want to build a power plant or what kind of plant it is there is some jag-off there to say " I dont want my kids to die here". See you have to bring your kids into the situation so somebody gives a shit! Then the people from the Sieara club come up and do nothing but cost the company a lot of money which we as consumers pay back in higher electric bills. What really cracks me up was when this big shot lawyer for the envirommental people showed up, he flew into town on a G-3 For anybody who doeasnt know what that is, that's a Gulfstream 3. That aircraft burns about 250 pounds of jet fuel an hour at cruise altitude. There are so much more I could talk about here but I will step down from the soap box now and let somebody else take the stand.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[billvon 3,111]

>Do the injunctions that affect the proper, and diligent planning to
> ensure safe growth of our country and economy concern me more?
> Yes. Is there a balance to be found? Maybe -- but it is the
> extremists that must find acceptance in the fact that they use the
> very products and services that they oppose.

Of course. The extremists on the green side have to realize that there are worse things than a new nuclear plant. If massive protests get a new nuclear power plant cancelled, then a coal fired power plant somewhere else has to burn more coal - and that's worse. Heck, a lot of the projects that are near and dear to their hearts (like a hydrogen economy) require massive amounts of energy, and nuclear power is currently the only way to get that much power.

At the same time, the extremists on the side of industry have to realize that science works. Most people now believe doctors when they say that smoking can kill you - and the same goes for particulate pollution from coal fires power plants. Saving the two-toed wombat's favorite trees may not matter too much in the long run, but saving estuaries matters a great deal. Get rid of an estuary to open a power plant, and you've lost a massive water filter, insect control system and flood control system rolled into one.

You can often tell these people by the hyperbole they use. "Pond scum! Why the hell should I care about pond scum and algae? Why are those environmental nuts talking about slime when it costs me an arm and a leg to run my air conditioner?" Yet kill off even half the plankton in the oceans, and we'd be dead pretty quickly. We rely on the ecosphere, from plankton to bacteria to nematodes to insects, to keep the earth habitable. Destroying it as quickly as is possible will be counterproductive in the long term.

>I would love to see an air quality measurement of the pollution the
> Hummer Dealership fires caused by ELF. I'd bet $100.00 that the
> fires caused more pollutants than the Hummers ever would have
> while in proper working order.

Agreed there.

>Meanwhile, they cost how many jobs in the process?

Oh, I think that created far more jobs than it cost. Someone will have to rebuild that dealership. And the people who want hummers will still get them, even if they have to pay another $100 to cover the cost of dealership repairs and/or wait another three weeks while more are built. Which of course is the opposite of what the ELF people intended to accomplish.

[Rookie120 0]

Oh my god, your one of the people I think I can talk to. There are a lot of things about the enviroment that I want preserved. The land that I hunt on, the streams that I fish and the hills that I hike. Do I want us to all die from fallout, of course not, do I want to live to be 90, gof I hope not but thats anothere subject. I care about the enviroment just as much as the person next to me, it's the nut-jobs that I cant stand. The hummer plant is a prime example. A dear friend of mine back home works in that plant in Mishawaka IN. He laughed when he saw that on the news. He joke and said well there's about 15 hours of O.T. this week. Would I ever buy something like that, probably not, it would be neat to have but it's just not practical for the type of driving I do. An F150 supercrew is more up my alley with 4x4. But until people relize that our power system is about maxed out and we need new ones which are more efficient build, the blackouts that we seen a few weeks ago will continue but will also start to be more frequent.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[billvon 3,111]

>But until people relize that our power system is about maxed out
> and we need new ones which are more efficient build, the blackouts
> that we seen a few weeks ago will continue but will also start to be
> more frequent.

Yep, although I don't think more power plants are neccessarily the right answer in the short term. Transmission lines are the #1 problem. Going to high-voltage DC transmission systems lets us get 30% more capacity out of those lines - and that's with no new power lines, just new equipment in the substations. No one can complain about that, and it can be done very quickly. And that lets Washington, DC use power from Niagra-Mohawk during the summer, and lets Toronto use East Coast power during the winter. Basically lets us use what we have more efficiently.

The second is intelligent loads. Even now, a few companies are on a plan that allows the utility to remotely shut down their A/C compressors for up to an hour a day in return for cheaper power rates. This way the first stage of a "blackout" just means that office buildings go from 72F to 76F for an hour, and then the A/C comes back on. Mildly annoying but a lot better than a real blackout. You can do the same with homes; put electric water heaters and pool pumps on the same sort of system, and give the homeowner a 5% break on power prices. That way the utility wins (they don't have to black out a city and lose that money) and the homeowner wins (lower utility bills.)

The third is distributed generation. This takes two forms - cogenerators for large buildings, basically small natural gas turbines that generate power and use the waste heat to heat the building. For homes, distributed solar is getting cheaper (down to about $6/watt) - in SD you can get a 2000 watt system for around $8000 after rebates. The cool thing about these systems is that they reduce the need for both transmission lines (because the power is used right there) and for power plants (because there's less overall load.)

The last is power plants, mainly because they take so long to site and build - and they need new transmission lines to carry the power to where it's needed, and they take time to build as well. In the ideal world of the near-future you have large hydro and nuclear plants to supply the 'baseline' power (i.e. the power you need all day every day) natural gas plants to deal with the 7PM peak demand, and solar and wind (which are intermittent in nature) to reduce the need for peaker plants. Solar is nice for this because it roughly matches demand; we use more power when it's light out.

[Rookie120 0]

Good idea's in theory, you seem to want to rely on solar a lot. Not a bad idea but it does have some bad points. #1 there is not a solar panel in the world that can power a 20 story apartment building. #2, the nicad batteries that are needed to back up the solar system are so damn expensive, Bill Gates doesnt even want them. #3 Why should I pay $8,000 for a solar panel when my electric and gas bill is only $65 a month. It sounds like cutting off a leg for an ingrown toe-nail. A lot of peoles responce would be well thats why they need to charge more for power so people have to go to solar power. I can name a million reasons why that idea sucks! We need to face facts here, we need more power. everthing from growing population to everything we use needs power. And the only way to get it is with building new plants. And for the wind power idea, all I have to do is mention the soviet republic of California. I read an article from the L.A. time once that a company want to build some massive wind mills farms but it was shut down before it even got off the ground because once again the enviromental jag-offs got involved and said birds would be sucked into the blades and be killed. My responce was good, maybe they would stop shittin on my truck as soon as it came out of the car wash. But the incident on the east coast was really cool from my point of view. For someone who understands half the crap the media was trying to explain but didnt know what the hell they were talking about. From the sound of it one th snafu started in ohio, and the other systems had just enough time to say "what the F&#% and candle express we go. I dont know all the details so I cant get into that to much. I'm off my soap box so who evers next step up!!!!!!!!

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[billvon 3,111]

>#1 there is not a solar panel in the world that can power a 20 story
>apartment building.

Agreed; solar is not a good "central" power source for powering heavy loads, it's a distributed power source for powering individual homes and small businesses. Not everyone can put up a wind turbine, a hydro system or install a generator, but most homeowners have a roof that they don't use for anything (other than it being a roof.)

>#2, the nicad batteries that are needed to back up the solar system
> are so damn expensive . . .

Grid intertie systems do not need batteries; they just dump power back into the grid when the sun's out. The baseline plants take care of the load when the sun isn't out. Since load peaks out during the day, this helps reduce the need for peakers.

>#3 Why should I pay $8,000 for a solar panel when my electric and
>gas bill is only $65 a month.

If it's that low you'd only need a $4000 system (after rebates.) That's around an 8 year payback assuming CA power rates.

>A lot of peoles responce would be well thats why they need to charge
> more for power so people have to go to solar power.

Power prices are going to go up, but it's not because of solar power; it's going to happen anyway. When you build new power plants, or you have a company like Enron who figures out how to play the system, or you need new transmission lines - that money has to come from somewhere. Even ignoring alternate power sources and evil corporations, energy costs are going to go up as natural gas gets more scarce and we use more and more of the water that used to be used to generate power.

As power prices go up and prices for solar go down, the payback time will decline.

>We need to face facts here, we need more power. everthing from
> growing population to everything we use needs power. And the only
> way to get it is with building new plants.

I disagree. There are a great many ways to make more power available for a growing population. Take compact flourescents. You can replace all the bulbs in your house with CF's, and they will give you twice the light for half the power (and ten times the life.) They cost more to begin with but you more than make it back in replacement costs and lower energy costs.

Take motor drives. AC motor drives for heavy industry use two to ten times less power, the motors last longer, and they're easier to control. Again, higher initial cost, but lower power and maintenance costs.

Take the transmission system. If you can use power from Canada to power Washington, DC loads, you've just increased your capacity without any new generation.

Any good strategy for the future has to take into consideration three approaches:

1. Energy efficiency (using less power to do more)
2. Transmission lines (moving power more efficiently)
3. New generation (providing more power)

1 and 2 are pretty easy short-term projects; 3 is harder and is a longer term solution. All three have to be balanced.

>And for the wind power idea, all I have to do is mention the soviet
> republic of California. I read an article from the L.A. time once that
> a company want to build some massive wind mills farms but it was
> shut down before it even got off the ground because once again the
> enviromental jag-offs got involved and said birds would be sucked
>into the blades and be killed.

I've heard of that too, but wind power is still growing 30% a year in the US despite the kooks. It will be a factor for purely economic reasons - wind power, using big turbines at good sites, is pretty cheap. Right now it's competitive with natural gas fired plants. And as the price of natural gas goes up, it gets more attractive.

>From the sound of it one th snafu started in ohio, and the other
>systems had just enough time to say "what the F&#% and candle
> express we go.

Interestingly, the entire problem could have been avoided with a better transmission system.

[Rookie120 0]

Well why dont the company's build the damn things? I can name 1 reason, everytime they want to do something some guy in cogress has to stick his nose into everything and he doesnt have the slightest idea of whats going on. As for a lot of your post I am gonna have to tap out because it sounds like your way more educated in the way the system works than I am. But if you want to talk aviation, now thats the field I'm in, lets chat! But keep the idea's coming, I just dont see people dumpin $8,000 on solar but keep up the brains. You seem to be one of the few I can Talk to about something like this without having the urge to hit in the head with a claw hammer

If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck!

[PhillyKev 0]

Quote

Well why dont the company's build the damn things? I can name 1 reason, everytime they want to do something some guy in cogress has to stick his nose into everything and he doesnt have the slightest idea of whats going on.

Actually, it's the exact opposite. Energy companies are the most deregulated they've ever been. The reason they don't want to upgrade the infrastructure is because it's a zero return investment. It will cost them money and not make them any.

[billvon 3,111]

>This is the industry that gets hit the hardest by misthought regulations or activism.

Keep in mind that there are industries that get hit by misthought repeal of regulation as well:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pollute31aug31,1,3442650.story

Relaxed Air Rules Choke an Industry

The pollution-control business, once booming, sees lean years ahead under new Bush policy.

DURHAM, N.C. — Cormetech Inc.'s state-of-the-art manufacturing plant makes big pollution-control devices that clean millions of tons of smog-producing nitrogen oxides from the smoke that billows out of power plants.

But on Friday, like all Fridays these days, most of the factory's machines were still. Since June, the Durham-based company has cut its workforce and production by more than half and shrunk its workweek from seven days to three or four.

The Bush administration on Wednesday announced a relaxation of the Clean Air Act's requirement that older facilities install modern pollution-control devices when they modify their plants in ways that significantly increase emissions.

[rhino 0]

Bastards..

[Designer 0]

Not very thrilled about it!Sure Big Money get the break again on this 1!As a EPA stack tester from 77-80,it sickens me to see the country go backwards again!Try breathing Sulfur Dioxide all day and knowing the rest of surrounding area will have to breath it everyday?(No more Coal fired plants thank you!)