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Blair Testimony before IURC on Edwardsport

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Public Health Disparities in Appalachian Coal Mining Communities

Presentation by Dr. Michael Hendryx, for the Kentucky Environmental Foundation on October 13, 2010
This presentation outlines significant environmental health and economic issues that correlate with coal mining in Appalachian communities.
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Crawford County LGR Air Permit now Available

Click the link below to download the Permit Application filed by A company called Liberty Green Renewables which wants to build a 32 MW biomass electric plant near Milltown in Crawford County in southern Indiana.
A group has formed to challenge the plant which intends to burn forest products. they can be reached at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/concernedcitizensofcrawfordcountyin/ or by writing: whipoorwilholler@verizon.net
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Toxic Tri-state

Except for Vanderburgh County, all the counties in SW Indiana increased their release of EPA designated Toxic Chemicals from ’03 to ’04.
Public pressure should come to bear on the industries that are repsonsible for the immense level toxic releases.
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Toxic Chemicals and Children’s Health in North America

A Call for Efforts to Determine the Sources, Levels of Exposure, and Risks that Industrial Chemicals Pose to Children’s Health
Almost 120 million children live in North America. Many of them face economic, social and environmental challenges every day. More children than ever need daily medication to control asthma. Others struggle to control aggressive outbursts and understand difficult learning concepts. Too many, particularly in poorer areas, suffer from gastrointestinal disease. Children who live with parents or others who smoke at home are exposed whenever a smoker lights up another cigarette. Many factors are affecting the health of these children.

One of the goals of this report is to focus on one of these factors: chemical releases into the environment from industrial activities. Chemical industrial releases are one important part of the puzzle but do not give a full picture of risk since chemicals from industry are only one type of pollutant. Human exposure levels to these chemicals, and other sources of pollution, are beyond the scope of this report…
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EPA Asthma Planning Kit

PDF Version available. 1.7 MB
Asthma Event Planning Kit

Peace Through Nukes

By: John Blair

Peace Through Nukes

Celebrate the Demise of Winter

By: John Blair

Climate Change is more than imaginary

Celebrate the Demise of Winter

Blair wins Indiana Civil Liberties Beck Award

Blair wins Civil Liberties Award

A Culture of Waste

CultureOfWaste.doc

Phase 2 of the New Economy

By: JOHN BLAIR

Phase2-NewEconomy.doc

So you have a new power plant proposed?

SoYouHaveNewPowerP.doc

Top Ten Reasons To Oppose Nuclear Energy

TopTenReasonsToOpposeNuclearEnergy.doc

Marble Hill-Indiana’s nuke

20% Complete, $2.8 billion wasted
When construction stopped on the ill fated Marble Hill nuclear plant in 1984, more than $2.8 billion had been expended. PSI, the plant’s sponsor became Cinergy and survived the stupid nuclear venture that nearly brought Indiana to its economic knees. ©2006 John Blair

Inconclusive by Design

A PDF booklet of case studies that show how federal and state environmental/health studies are designed to show no proof of disease being caused by the industrial release of toxic chemicals, regardless of the volume of those releases.
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‘Toxics tax’ would be 21st-century solution to state’s woes

By: JOHN BLAIR

ToxicsTaxECP.doc

Fact Sheet About The Bush Administration’s Proposal

BushNSRFactsheet.doc

EPA Brief before EAB on Prairie State GS

2.5 MB Brief dated March 7, 2006 filed by EPA and requested by the US ENvironmental Appeals Board for clarification of certain issues raised in the Sierra Club/Valley Watch Challenge of the PS Permit
EPA Brief

“Clean Coal” is not clean

January 23, 2007 – Opinion by John Blair, valleywatch.net editor. Proposals by some utilities to build so called “clean coal” plants are no more than a ruse to capture federal and state taxpayer funded subsidies while continuing to pollute.
Proponents of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology like that Duke and Vectren desire to use at Edwardsport, IN, loudly proclaim that IGCC is the answer to global warming since the technology makes its easier to capture carbon dioxide. Once captured, their pitch is that it can be “sequestered” for thousands of years in deep geological formations. Out of sight, out of mind.

In December 2006, the US Department of Energy finally admitted in a supplement to an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for an IGCC plant in Pennsylvania that, “DOE has considered the potential to reduce project CO2 emissions using geologic sequestration. This is not a reasonable option because sequestration technology is not sufficiently mature to be implemented at production scale during the demonstration period for the proposed facilities.”

This admission is consistent with most recent research done by government and private sources as it relates to sequestration. In fact, most recent research tells a story that makes the whole idea of sequestration questionable, at best, and perhaps even dangerous for those who may live near the areas where CO2 is dumped underground.

Three areas of concern have emerged in recent studies.

1. CO2 injected near earthquake faults like the region of SW Indiana which is in the New Madrid fault zone, may actually increase the potential for earthquakes due to CO2’s ability to lubricate geologic plates, making it easier for them to move when subjected to pressure from beneath the earth’s surface.

2. Injection of CO2 can ultimately damage groundwater used for drinking by a chemical conversion when the CO2 is injected causing an increase in acidity which leaches dangerous chemicals like metals out of the formation. Those contaminants often find their way to groundwater. Such a chemical conversion could render entire aquifers unusable as drinking water which people depend upon.

3. Huge financial and energy investment in sequestration. Most of the debate about IGCC has evolved around whether it is possible to convert coal to a synthesis gas in a manner that can be used to generate electricity more cleanly than conventional technology called pulverized coal. The real reason utilities are seeking to build these plants is to capture enormous federal and state taxpayer funded subsidies. For instance, Duke and Vectren were recently awarded more than $133 million in federal tax credits to build their costly and dirty plant.

This wrongly labeled “clean coal” has proven to be somewhat cleaner from an air pollution standpoint than pulverized coal but missing from the debate has been a real assessment of what to do with the captured chemicals that are by-products of the process, what the cost of actually building and operating these facilities will be on a commercial scale, how much of the energy produced will be required to run the sophisticated chemical processes required thus reducing the overall efficiency of the plants and what is the actual cost of capturing the CO2 and permanently storing it in some underground geological formation.

As it currently stands, not a single one of these IGCC proposals addresses any of these issues in any great detail. Not only that, but most IGCC proposals are not even promising carbon capture, let alone sequestration.

Add to that the fact that the costs of building proposed IGCC plants has completely gone through the roof. In Minnesota, government documents have recently revealed the cost of Excelsior’s Mesaba IGCC has gone to at least $2.155 billion for a 603 MW facility. That’s a whopping $3.5 million per megawatt, higher than projected cost for nuclear plants these days. It is also true in Indiana where Duke Energy president, Jim Rogers told the media a couple of months ago that the cost of their Edwardsport IGCC plant had increased in cost to build from $1.3 billion in early 2006 to what is now in excess of “$2 billion” for 630 megawatts. That is a per MW

Gibson

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Paradise

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Rockport

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Rockport Picture

Rockport

U.N. Climate Report Predicts Droughts, Flooding

April 6, 2007 – By Christopher Joyce, National Public Radio. The final report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is stark in its depiction of what’s in store for the planet: flooding, droughts, extinctions of plants and animals, and high costs for everyone.
After five days of debate and an all-night, down-to-the-wire battle, scientists and government officials agreed Friday to a new report outlining the effects of global warming on the planet.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations scientific group, released its findings today in Brussels, Belgium. Although haggling over the fine print diluted some of the original language, the final report is stark in its depiction of what’s in store for the planet: flooding, droughts, extinctions of plants and animals, and high costs for everyone.

This is the fourth report from the U.N. climate panel in 17 years, and it’s proved to be one of the hardest hitting ones. The first chapter came out in February after tough negotiations. It said that scientists are more than 90 percent sure that humans are warming the planet.

In latest report, the panel addressed the impacts of global warming, and what their assessment turned up is troubling.
Many coastal copmmunities will flood. Severe droughts will damage crops, and there will stronger storms, hurricanes and heat waves. Many coral reefs will die, and many of the world’s plants and animals will be at higher risk of extinction.

But scientists who wrote the report wanted to say they had “very high confidence” in their findings. That means they think they have a nine out of 10 chance of being right. That started a fight, according to Patricia Romero Lankao, one of the scientific authors who works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. (MORE)
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Duke Air Permit

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Cash Creek Hearing Audio

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KY NewGas Application

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Biagi video

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Paradise

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Gibson Looking north

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Gibson Ash ponds

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Rockport

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OWB Presentation

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