There have been two different diaries today covering the Supreme Court's decision about regulating air pollution that travels across state lines:
Breathing will be easier thanks to today's Supreme Court decision upholding EPA authority and Supreme Court: One State's Coal Pollution Not Allowed to Make Another State's Families Sick
Those diaries already do a good job of covering the Supreme Court decision so thought I'd adding a bit more information about how it relates to a smokestack I know.
In the picture below is the Mitchell Power Plant. It's a coal fired electric generating plant that's located alongside the Ohio River below Moundsville WV.
You might have noticed the rather tall smokestack as well you should. At 1206 feet it's just shy of a 1/4 mile tall. When the smokestack was completed in 1968 this was the worlds tallest. It's still ranked as third tallest in the country while the tallest is only 11 feet higher.
At the time of the plant's construction local air pollution was a known problem so this smokestack was the solution. You shoved the smoke and particulate matter so high up in the air that it was no longer a local problem. Problem solved. At least locally.
After 40 years you might think really tall smokestacks would be more numerous but something happened around the same time this plant was being built that put a kibosh on the whole super tall smokestack business. That would be the EPA. They started regulating smokestack emissions so just pumping pollution higher into the air was no longer the answer. Not too long after the plant was opened it had to make changes. It had to treat the smoke coming out from the plant.
This is a view from Google that shows the Mitchell Plant from above. You can see the first batch of pollution controls that were added. The blue circles shows where the smoke exits the back of Unit #1, there are two units, and the blue lines show where the original ductwork, no longer there, directed it into the smokestack. That's how it used to be. Straight out the back and up the stack. The yellow lines show the ductwork that was added to route the smoke into electrostatic precipitators(the red box) before they were routed to the smokestack. You've probably heard about massive flyash spills lately in the news. Electrostatic precipitators produce that flyash by removing it from the burnt coal emissions.
For the next thirty years this was all that was needed to meet EPA regs. No longer. This is how it looks now.
You can see the ductwork that routes around the right side of the original smokestack and now runs to the new smokestack that's equipped with scrubbers and equipment to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions. Also notice that nothing is coming out of the top of the old 1/4 mile smokestack. It's no longer used.
The new scrubber stack is not as tall as the original because it doesn't have to be. When I read about the Supreme Court decision today I thought of this smokestack and how it shows how things used to be and thankfully aren't any more.
By the way, I referred to this as a smokestack I know. That's because I used to work at this power plant and my locker room was located in the bottom of the smokestack. A 1/4 mile tall cement smokestack has to be made with an extremely large base. Large enough for a couple levels worth of rooms and workspaces along with a lunch room, equipment storage area, a welding school and locker room.
Wed Apr 30, 2014 at 7:33 AM PT: My first Community Spotlight. Thanks Rescue Rangers!
Because of this honor I'll throw in a little relevant movie trivia. In 1955 the famous actor Charles Laughton directed his one and only movie The Night of the Hunter. The movie stars Robert Mitchum as a murderous preacher stalking two children who know a secret concerning money from a bank robbery commuted by their father Peter Graves. In this movie Mitchum is probably best remembered for having the words "LOVE" and "HATE" tattooed on his fingers (i.e. see "The Blues Brothers"). The movie is based on a book written by Peter Grubb. Grubb was born in Moundsville WV and the actions in the movie transpire in and around the town. After Robert Mitchum's character marries the children's Mom, played by Shelley Winters, he moves them to the town of Cresaps Landing. It's here that he kills Shelley Winters and starts chasing the children. It's called Cresaps Landing in the movie but the real name of the town is Cresap. All signs of the town are now gone because the land was bought up by the electric company and in it's place was built first the Kammer Power Plant and then the Mitchell Plant. So that means somewhere in the river just off the shore from this power plant the remains of Shelley Winter's character is still sitting in her Model-T, moldering.