Coal
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While coal-fired power plants are notoriusly dirity, some are a lot worse than others. They are usually the older plants. One that has long galled me is the old, but big, 4-corners power plant near the Four Corners area of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. It spews its pall over the scenic canyonlands country…
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“U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that he’ll do everything I can to stop construction of three major coal-fired power plants in his home state of Nevada and will push for more alternative energy development.” Reid had seemed to be neutral to leaning toward the coal plants. They are being proposed not because…
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I thought this story interesting: The Powder River Basin has a whole lot of water pumping as a result of coalbed methane production – enough to “perennialize these (ephemeral) streams.” Panel backs limits on coalbed methane water use. AP post 1349
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Most conservationists are celebrating the defeat of two amendments to the new energy bill that would have authorized $200 million in grants or $10 billion in direct loans for coal gasification/liquefaction projects. Coal state senators are pushing this as a “clean” method of using the vast coal deposits, many believe use of coal, is not…
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Thomas had been expected to soon introduce legislation protecting the Wyoming Range from oil and gas leasing. Now he is dead. Story in the Jackson Hole News and Guide by Cory Hatch. As if to underscore the importance of not granting these leases unless you are willing to see complete field development, the Fish and…
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Here is the latest on the proposed Cline Mine, just north of the B.C. border. Montana’s senator Baucus got Secretary of State Rice to urge Canada’s federal government to ask for a more detailed environmental assessment than B.C. requires. However, the government in Ottawa has not taken any action yet. The article below in the…
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The REA was created during the New Deal to bring electricity, light and hope to poor rural areas that private utilities did not find it worthwhile to electrify. Many years later the agency is still around and uses your taxpayer money to subsidize the construction of polluting coal-fired power plants to areas that are now…
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If all goes according to plan, Utah will expand electrical production in the next several years by more than 2,000 megawatts. Almost all of it will come from coal-burning power plants, according to the DAQ. Three of the state’s largest plants are slated to expand: Hunter in Emery County, Bonanza in Uintah and IPP in…