In a story published yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity takes a deep dive into the public health impact of the nation’s “super polluters,” a collection of industrial polluters that account for an outsized share of toxic air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Produced in collaboration with USA Today and The Weather Channel, the story focuses in on Evansville, Indiana, a city of 120,000 nestled in the southwest corner of the state and ringed by no fewer than seven coal-fired power plants within 30 miles. According to the story, they collectively pump out millions of pounds of toxic air pollution and emit greenhouse gases comparable to those produced by Hong Kong.
At the heart of CPI’s piece is an Information Age equivalent of shoe-leather journalism: the Center merged data from two EPA datasets – the Toxics Release Inventory and the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program – and identified the nation’s top 100 polluting industrial complexes for toxics and greenhouse gases, respectively. Comparing the two lists, they note that 21 facilities are on both, and four are among those surrounding Evansville.
From there, the story goes on to paint a powerfully specific picture of the health implications, including the tale of a 12-year-old Evansville asthma patient who died from an acute attack on a day in which fine particle pollution and sulfur dioxide pollution spiked. His mother said the boy’s doctors never warned her of any problem associated with air pollution. The only explanation she says she got for the cause of his fatal asthma attack was that it might have been related to a spike in pollen.
The efforts of Indiana Governor Mike Pence to protect the coal industry from efforts to rein in its pollution also get a close look, including the decision to join the lawsuit to derail the Clean Power Plan that was argued before the D.C. Circuit earlier this week. Meanwhile, Pence gets credit for killing the state’s alternative energy programs that flourished under his predecessor and doing nothing to plan for the impacts of climate change.
CPR’s Thomas McGarity and Sidney Shapiro are both quoted in the story, as are a host of environmental experts and some coal defenders. In that latter category, the accompanying 12-minute video includes a former Bush administration EPA official, now a lawyer for coal industry clients, who decries the so-called “war on coal,” only to be shot down by a New York University School of Medicine professor who dismisses it as “corporate victim-playing. This is something abusers do; they claim they’re the victims…when in fact they’re the ones that are causing the damage.”
The story and the video are both worth a few minutes of your time. In the video, note the swooping crane shot just over four minutes in, starting with a ground-level view of a cemetery. As the camera rises, you see a family visiting a grave, then power lines a few hundred yards beyond, then a train with a number of coal cars, and finally a collection of belching smokestacks in the distance. There’s the story.
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Matthew Freeman | September 30, 2016
In a story published yesterday, the Center for Public Integrity takes a deep dive into the public health impact of the nation’s “super polluters,” a collection of industrial polluters that account for an outsized share of toxic air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Produced in collaboration with USA Today and The […]
Jeremy Baker | September 29, 2016
Larry Hogan promised to be the “best environmental governor that’s ever served” in Maryland. But three recent policy developments call that claim into question. Earlier this year, the Hogan administration vetoed the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which would have raised Maryland’s renewable energy portfolio standard – the share of electricity that energy providers must derive […]
Amy Sinden | September 26, 2016
Originally published on RegBlog by CPR Member Scholar Amy Sinden. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court‘s opinion in Michigan v. EPA last term, a number of commentators have revived talk of something called the “Cost Benefit State.” It is supposed to be a good thing, although it makes some of us shudder. The […]
William Buzbee | September 23, 2016
Next Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear four hours of argument over the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Federalism-linked statutory, regulatory, and doctrinal law has been and will be crucial to the CPP’s fate, and several issues of federalism will play a key role. In designing the CPP, the U.S. […]
Katie Tracy | September 21, 2016
Federal contractors that violate labor laws not only cheat workers by disregarding their rights to fair pay and safe workplaces, but they also tend to run into unexpected costs and delays during performance of the contracts they’re awarded. With this in mind, in 2014, President Obama issued Executive Order (E.O.) 13673, which seeks to improve […]
| September 20, 2016
The Chesapeake Bay watershed and its restoration framework under the Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) are so large and complex that it can be a real challenge to study, much less write about, the problem and the ongoing restoration efforts. This is why the recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assessment of the tiny […]
Alice Kaswan | September 19, 2016
California’s recent climate legislation is noteworthy not only for its toughest-in-the-nation carbon reduction goals – 40 percent below 1990 emissions by 2030 – but also for continuing the state’s tradition of linking climate and environmental justice goals. AB 197, which accompanied a carbon reduction bill known as SB 32, prioritizes direct emission reductions likely to […]
James Goodwin | September 15, 2016
Last night, the House of Representatives, in an almost completely party-line vote, passed the Regulatory Integrity Act (H.R. 5226), a bill that would prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other agencies from engaging the public on their pending efforts to address climate change, prevent foodborne illness, and […]
Brian Gumm | September 13, 2016
Every year, Thomson Reuters and West Publishing compile a set of significant and influential articles from a number of legal scholars who focus on land use and environmental law. The Land Use & Environment Law Review represents some of the best scholarship on these issues, and peer reviewers recently included five pieces on environmental law […]