Word: coal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Nine states filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) two weeks ago, charging that its reduction requirements for mercury are grossly inadequate and will allow some of the most egregious polluters (typically older, coal-fired power plants) to avoid installing mercury controls indefinitely. I might be inclined to cut the EPA some slack if the rule-writing process didn't smell so, well, fishy. But the Government Accountability Office and the EPA inspector general have criticized the agency for ignoring scientific evidence and allowing industry lobbyists too much input...
...others, and why places like central Maine, eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia--where OxyContin abuse first emerged as a problem--are awash in drug-related crime. But Sheriff H.S. Caudill says a clue to how it all began in Tazewell lies in one of the original nicknames for OxyContin: coal miner's cocaine. Retired miners with back injuries were among the first in the area to use the powerful drug, and as word of its effectiveness spread, abusers began diverting it, selling it for up to $1 per mg, Caudill says. "We're seeing a lot of elderly people dealing...
Until lately the county was known for little more than its coal mines and crooked roads. While it's true that leaders staged a fistfight in 1800 to determine where to place the county seat--the town of Tazewell (pop. 4,100) was the winner--residents like to point up their law-and-order quietness with the story of how they once put a cow in jail because they could not tolerate the clanging bell. Now the county's crime woes have made it a case study in how prescription-pill abuse has stressed a judicial system to the breaking...
...that Kiwis don't grasp the problem. A recent survey by power company Contact Energy found that "overwhelmingly people value security of supply ahead of price or environmental concerns," says chief executive Stephen Barrett. New Zealand has plenty of options for ensuring that security: rushing rivers for hydroelectricity, rich coal reserves that, thanks to the gas windfall, have hardly been touched. But for almost every option there are opponents, sometimes very angry ones. And the delay-plagued process for vetting resource developments makes it easy for the noisy to get their way. "Small numbers of people, who may not even...
...about coal - of which the country has enough, experts say, to match the output of 50 Maui gas fields? When dwindling gas flows forced the country's largest power station, at Huntly, to switch to coal last year, there were noisy protests. Once the old station at Marsden Point is modernized, it will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in Australasia, says its owner, Mighty River Power. But that doesn't impress critics, who say getting electricity from coal is a betrayal of New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol obligations. "It's a backward step for us to start using coal...