To say that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has become more friendly to big polluters in this state under Governor Mitch Daniels would be and understatement of epic proportions. You know, almost as epic as the finding by Forbes that Indiana ranks 49th out of 50 states in its most recent "America's Greenest States" survey.
If you're looking for yet another example of how our state's environmental protection efforts have been transformed under Mitch "Quit Your Whining" Daniels, his recent selection of a new chief lawyer for the department should do the trick:
David Joest, a former registered lobbyist for Peabody Coal Co., became the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's assistant commissioner for the Office of Legal Counsel in April. That post puts him in charge of civil enforcement and criminal investigations of the state's biggest polluters.
IDEM spokesman Barry Sneed said the agency "is fortunate to have someone of his caliber and experience."
But environmentalists say they're baffled by his appointment, which comes as his former employer, Peabody Energy, seeks to start new mines in Indiana.
They question the appointment to IDEM of a man who has made a career fighting environmental agencies and worked to prevent stricter environmental rules in Indiana and Michigan.
You at least have to hand it to Gov. Daniels and his administration for consistency -- their "less is more attitude" is applied to just about everything with equal force. For the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, the post-election changes have been swift and the explanations unconvincing when given.
For their part, already cash-strapped cities across the state aren't very happy, and as the Post-Tribune notes, they're letting the Guv know.
City officials in Evansville share outrage from Hammond and Gary over changes in enforcement at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
They call the changes "absurd" and criticize IDEM's management for "emasculating" the agency. City officials are now taking their frustration to the Indiana General Assembly, where Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. has been asked to testify to a state House committee.
Several bills also are in the works and the EPA has sent a letter with concerns to IDEM.
"We had very little expectation anything we said or did to communicate with (IDEM Commissioner Thomas) Easterly or Gov. (Mitch) Daniels would matter," said Dona Bergman, director of Evansville's Environmental Protection Agency.
"Frankly, I think U.S. EPA, from that letter, is quite concerned. I don't think IDEM bothered to consult with EPA before they made these decisions. EPA staff we have spoken to were quite shocked."
As with all things Mitch, the phrase being thrown by the administration is "efficiency," a defense that as always seems to privilege short-term expediency over the long-term protection of our state's resources.
If this story is to be believed, the next policy change we may see out of the Daniels administration will be rules allowing police officers to refuse enforcement against bad cops, and letting firefighters burn down buildings on a whim. Oh, and government employees don't have to pay taxes anymore.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has stopped issuing fines against other state agencies in Indiana that violate their environmental permits.
For instance, the Indiana Department of Transportation violated wastewater permits for rest stops across the state more than 550 times over four years. It discharged sludge and ammonia into streams, causing algae blooms and potential damage to aquatic life. But INDOT got no fines. It got off with a legal slap on the wrist.
Environmentalists are appalled, calling it a "creeping lack of accountability" and commitment to enforcing the law.
"Think of the precedent this sets. It says you can completely disregard violating" the law, said Valparaiso environmental attorney Kim Ferraro. "We're going to tell you to abide by the permit limits but if you don't, that's OK. It's consistent with the idea that enforcement is not important. We might as well not have environmental laws if there's no enforcement. They're environmental suggestions."
The policy extends to both air and water enforcement, and essentially asks for IDEM to adopt some misguided "gentleman's agreement" tactic when dealing with misbehavior within state government. Kudos to the Post-Trib for continuing their onslaught of public records requests.
Another day, another cutback of funding for environmental regulation by the mean, green Mitch Daniels machine.
Hammond city officials say they are reeling from a state agency's decision to terminate an air quality contract earlier this month.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management told six municipalities, including Hammond and Gary, Dec. 1 that it would either not renew or soon terminate service contracts with local environmental agencies for "air permitting, air monitoring and compliance functions," according to Rob Elstro, spokesman for IDEM's Office of Air Quality.
Both Hammond and Gary had two-year contracts set to expire Dec. 31, 2009, but they will be terminated March 31.
[...]
Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. said the move was unexpected and puts the city in a bind because the budgets for the 2009 fiscal year have already been approved locally and sent to the state. Also, McDermott said the city already took the environmental department off the tax rolls next year, so the department could rely on fine and fee collection to balance its budget. He was disappointed that the department made the decision without giving advance notice.
"At least five employees' salaries are covered by the state," McDermott said. "I just feel it's unprofessional and going backwards. We know better in Hammond what's going on than in Indianapolis. It's a step backwards for environmental compliance."
Welcome to post-election bliss, Mitch Daniels style:
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is dissolving its Office of Enforcement -- the office that responds to environmental violations, assures polluters comply with their permits, and deters violations.
"The Office of Enforcement as a separate entity will no longer exist," IDEM?spokeswoman Amber Finkelstein confirmed to the Post-Tribune.
IDEM is also modifying its compliance and enforcement policy, narrowing the definitions of what constitutes the most serious environmental violations to say they must cause actual harm to human health or threaten the environment. The new policy also gives managers more discretion over when companies will face prosecution and penalties.
The closure is already taking place. The policy has not yet gone through the official process.
Environmentalists are dumbfounded. They say the changes undermine IDEM's purpose and endangers human health and the environment because the agency will be reacting to complaints by the public after damage is done rather than being proactive and precautionary.
Between this, cutting our higher education budget, and vague threats against Medicaid funding, the last week has seen Governor Daniels finally shed his motorcycle-riding everyman image and slip quietly back into his comfort zone. And it is an ugly, ugly place.
If there has been one news organization who has shown an almost limitless dedication to pursuing a story this year, it would have to be the folks over at the Gary Post-Tribune. They have been the thorn in the Daniels-IDEM side since the beginning, and they simply will not let up in their investigations of the oh-so-shady dealings between the governor, the so-called environmental managers, and large corporations who have apparently been buying their way around those pesky regulations. This morning's editorial doesn't break new ground, but the opening paragraphs are both seasonal and true.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is keeping a list -- and checking it twice.
The agency in charge of enforcing water and air regulations has been sending lists of newspaper stories to Gov. Mitch Daniels' office, marking them as "positive," "negative" or "neutral."
But unlike Santa, who makes his list known through song and verse, the governor has offered only a "no comment."
While the paranoia of such a list is almost Nixonian, the hubris of not commenting is more like Daniels' former boss, George W. Bush.
Just when it looked like the BP controversy was fading into the distance, the Indiana Department of Environmental (mis)Management is back in the news once more. And, as usual, things aren't looking all that great.
Our friends over at the Journal Gazette catch us up to speed on a permit request from tire manufacturer BFGoodrich.
As Dan Stockman's Sunday story reported, the tire manufacturer is asking IDEM to grant a permit that allows it to increase its ozone-causing pollution at its Woodburn plant by as much as 40 tons per year. The company wants to use the additive silane in its tire-making process to improve the fuel efficiency of its tires. But it will also increase pollution.
The environmental concern is that the draft permit doesn't call for any new pollution controls to reduce the increase in pollution. It doesn't call for any monitoring of the company's pollution to ensure it does not exceed the 40-ton-per-year increase in pollution. And the most disconcerting aspect of the flawed permit application is that it uses secret calculations provided by the company to determine the anticipated amount of the increase in pollution and, so far, IDEM has shown a distinct lack of interest in double-checking the numbers.
The permit application is a real eye opener about how little outside oversight IDEM exercises over companies' compliance with environmental regulations.
Under Mitch Daniels, environmental policy and oversight has become, for lack of a better description, a complete joke. IDEM has time and time again given priority to the private sector over ordinary people, and this most recent example is just a small part of the ever-growing list of short-sighted environmental policy decisions.
For their part, the Journal Gazette does an excellent job of summing up the problems facing Indiana if the current brand of leadership continues to be encouraged by Daniels and his pals.
IDEM has garnered a reputation of being business-friendly, but sometimes it appears IDEM is being downright flirtatious with the companies it's responsible for regulating. It's in Indiana's best interest to maintain an environment that is friendly to economic development, but completely abandoning environmental protection endangers the economy rather than strengthening it.
Governor Mitch Daniels has described Hoosiers in the northern part of the state as "emotional" over the last few months, dismissing their concerns with a new environmental permit request from the BP plant in that area. He has, to put it mildly, stood in direct opposition to the various people-powered groups that have sought to put in place additional environmental oversight on the international oil giant.
When the tenacious reporting of the Gary Post-Tribunerevealed a memo that raised questions about the relationship between the state and BP corporate officials, many questioned whether a public access request could be far behind.
A public relations official at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management called a BP official seven times leading up to a public hearing that was heavily attended by proponents of the refinery modernization.
Sandra Flum, director of community relations, also made three calls to the Northwest Indiana Forum, a private business advocacy group.
The phones calls, obtained by the Post-Tribune through public records requests, suggest IDEM might have worked with BP and economic development groups to stack the public hearing in favor of BP's controversial expansion, environmentalists say.
"I don't know that it's inappropriate" to make that number of calls, said Tom Anderson, executive director of Save the Dunes Council, "but the appearance is, the agency is working with the polluter and the (Northwest Indiana) Forum to make it look like there was a lot more support than there is support for this project and the increased pollution."
Anderson said the unusually large attendance at a March 14 hearing in Hammond, when more than 1,000 people showed up mostly in support of the permit, seemed to be a deliberate attempt to orchestrate the hearing and indicate there was more support for the permit than was actually the case.
Governor Daniels asserts the calls were purely "informational," but that doesn't really answer the question as to why BP officials were getting daily phone updates while many of the residents actually affected by this permit process were left in the dark.
Gitte Laasby of the Gary Post-Tribune continues to tirelessly turn over rocks in the search for answers about the handling of BP's air permit hearing by Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Specifically, why Indiana state law was ignored by the state agency in scheduling the permit hearing, giving the public less than the required notice of 30 days.
The result has been a lot of finger-pointing, and very little in the way of substantive answers to many of these lingering questions.
As the Post-Tribune revealed in April, IDEM's chief of the permits branch of the Office of Air Quality, Matt Stuckey, e-mailed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January to ask how long was the required notice. He was told state law applies.
State law specifies it's 30 days, but IDEM scheduled a hearing with 18 to 20 days notice.
Now IDEM won't say who at the agency made the call to ignore state law.
The Post-Tribune asked IDEM three times whether Stuckey or anybody else from IDEM looked up state requirements.
Another question was whether Stuckey informed his superiors of the response he received from the EPA and, if so, who made the decision to schedule the hearing with too little notice anyway.
Each time, IDEM sent back a similar answer.
"We looked into it and, considering the public was requesting the hearing to be moved back, we did so," spokeswoman Amy Hartsock wrote.
Oh, I see. The public asked to ignore the law, so they did. Seems fair enough to me.
That's the question posed by Gitte Laasby of the Gary Post-Tribune this morning, and the answer from Governor Daniels and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is clear: Money.
At a recent speech in Valparaiso, Gov. Mitch Daniels said he set IDEM's goal of increasing personal income.
"It's coming from me. That is the object of our administration, to raise the personal, after-tax income of Hoosiers. We told every department that they were to look for those steps they could take, what could you do faster, or stop doing, to make it more likely the next job happens in Indiana and not somewhere else," Daniels said.
"We protect the environment first and foremost. We have not changed a single regulation except to toughen some. But the way IDEM can contribute is by making its decisions more promptly and more consistently."
First of all, if that's the object of your administration, you should really look at getting a new object. Because to be brutally honest, Mitch, you're pretty damn terrible at it.
Now, I'm not going to sit here and say that IDEM shouldn't work with businesses to find solutions to problems that serve to benefit the state both economically and environmentally. What I'm saying is that you should make it the mission to do both.
Not one, or the other, but both. What's so hard about that?
IDEM chief Tom Easterly refused to be interviewed, but his counterparts from Illinois and Michigan were more than happy to discuss what structures their decisions.
Easterly's Michigan counterpart, who was also available for an interview on a day's notice, said states' environmental departments have similar day-to-day operations and struggles, but may differ on bigger issues.
"Where you might see a difference is on the larger policy issues. For instance, Michigan is developing a mercury rule that mandates a 90 percent reduction by 2015. I doubt IDEM is doing that. It's not something they're currently comfortable with," Steven Chester, director of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said.
He said politics may have an influence on environmental agencies because most agency directors are appointed and serve at the will of the governor.
"With a change in administration, clearly there can be a change in perspective," Chester said. "Whomever is the head of that agency obviously can have an impact on the thinking and acting of the agency."
The last year has brought us extensive coverage of the controversial attempt by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to push through the certification of a big expansion of operations by BP in the far-northern reaches of the state. Coming under fire from environmentalists and political leaders, IDEM and BP eventually backed down, agreeing to raise the standards that the new plant would meet and to not increase wastewater dumping into Lake Michigan.
Now, Governor Daniels made no secret of his disdain for the people of this area who were reluctant to simply accept the bump in pollution in the name of economic growth. He called the concerns of the community "emotional," and the thinly-veiled coordination between the Governor's office, the IDEM leadership, and the BP public relations office incited even more anger as residents questioned by their man Mitch wasn't helping to make both sides of the dispute happy, rather than just his friends in the corporate board rooms.
Today brings word via the ubiquitous Gitte Laasby that after last week's public hearing over a BP air permit -- in which questions were raised as to whether the room was purposely packed with vocal BP supporters -- the Governor's office received thanks from the BP corporate office for IDEM's tireless work throughout the process. An internal memo was sent out to IDEM employees, which the Gary Post-Tribune has since received. This has some questioning the super-friendly relationship between IDEM and BP, and to what extent they coordinated throughout this process.
During the permitting process for BP's wastewater permit last year, critics said there wasn't enough public participation. This time, more than 1,000 people attended the hearing, but IDEM officials said they did not do anything different from last time to encourage attendance.
Asked if IDEM's actions were limited to sending out e-mails, public notices and media advisories, IDEM spokesman Rob Elstro said, "To our knowledge, yes."
Kim Ferraro, attorney for the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana, said Murray's memo shows IDEM has clear concerns about BP's interests.
"I find it cozy, too, that BP's head of governmental affairs called to thank IDEM," she said. "There's certainly some collaboration with BP and higher-ups in IDEM based on this."
You can check out the memo for yourself and make up your own mind.
If I were a polluter in northwest Indiana, I would make a mental note to not ever let Gitte Laasby find out. The Gary Post-Tribune reporter has been relentless in covering the various wankerous actions of both BP and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
The Post-Tribune revealed Sunday that BP is relying on emission credits to be able to avoid further reductions in pollution for its modernized refinery. BP earned the credits by reducing fine-particle pollution by 107.3 tons in 2003, before it was required to. But the credits expire on June 1.
BP readily released that information when asked, but IDEM avoided the question.
The agency has also refused to give environmentalists the two months they say they need to review the nearly 1,400-page document plus thousands of pages in support documents. IDEM said it's on a tight deadline mandated by law, but environmentalists maintain IDEM isn't doing enough to protect the public's interest.
"Given what happened last summer, it's the same crap all over again. IDEM, as an agency that's supposed to protect the public interest, really isn't doing it," said Kim Ferraro, attorney for the Legal Environmental Aid Foundation of Indiana.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has been helping out their best buds at BP again, and their rush to move the heavy polluter through the bureaucratic process at light speed has a lot of environmental groups wondering if they will once more see air quality take a back seat to the big-business interests that apparently now run our state government.
BP has pulled their controversial air permit request, and replaced it with a new and supposedly improved plan. Gitte Laasby of the Gary Post-Tribune has more:
BP announced late Wednesday that it has withdrawn its 2006 air permit application to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and submitted a new, stricter one Wednesday.
Although the company proposes to increase emissions of some materials compared to 2006, company officials say the refinery would reduce overall regulated emissions to 8,332 tons per year in 2011, 7 percent less than in 2006.
Company officials say the proposed increases in lead (25 percent), particulate matter (21 percent) and sulfur dioxide (20 percent) would remain below regulatory limits.
"Any way you're seeing increases, it's associated with the fact that heavy Canadian crude oil requires more heat to process," said BP spokesman Scott Dean.
You can check out the new permit application for yourself here.
Proving once again that only "management" the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is interested in is the kind offered out of a corporate boardroom, IDEM has received a rebuke from the EPA for a new pollution permit that has been deemed an inadequate restriction upon the expansion of harmful discharges into the Grand Calumet River.
Indiana officials confirmed Friday they will be changing the permit in the wake of the EPA memo and input from the public.
"We want to effectively address all concerns that have been raised to us," Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman Amy Hartsock said.
At stake is how much oil and grease, lead, arsenic, benzene, fluoride and nitrates from the mill can be dumped into the Grand Calumet River, which flows into Lake Michigan. The lake is the source of drinking water for Chicago and several other cities.
U.S. Steel's Gary Works -- a series of blast furnaces, coke ovens and steel-finishing mills -- is the largest source of water pollution in the Lake Michigan basin. The complex dumped more than 1.7 million pounds in 2005.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois -- who has been more than vocal in his criticisms of Governor Mitch Daniels' apparent belief that you can't expand jobs and protect the environment -- came out swinging again yesterday:
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said the U.S. Steel permit was a "call to arms" for his state's congressional delegation and said he would ask company executives and environmental officials to explain the decisions.
"It troubles me why, month after month, we have to worry about the governor of Indiana asking for another permit to pollute this lake," said Durbin. "I wish Governor Daniels would come up and take a look at this beautiful lake.
"It is not just the backyard and sewage dump for the heavy industries that happen to be in Indiana. It happens to be a great asset for his state, for our state and for many others in the Midwest."
Governor Daniels' response was that Durbin clearly didn't care about jobs, but I think the issue here is that Daniels is too willing to capitulate to the demands of heavy industry in this state. If Daniels wants to throw around phrases like "aim higher," then he should probably at least make a token effort to live up to those slogans by doing just that. We can have jobs and a clean Lake Michigan, and for Mitch to pretend like that is too difficult simply doesn't reflect well upon the flanneled one.
Christine Kraly gives us an update on the "official" study of BP's wastewater discharge system, which the company says will be the only such report that they consider when deciding how to move forward with their proposed plant expansion.
Researchers say they plan to spend up to nine months studying BP wastewater discharge technologies, with plans to update the public along the way.
Representatives from Purdue University Calumet's Water Institute and BP discussed goals of the research Wednesday at the school's Hammond campus.
Last month, Purdue and Argonne National Laboratory were tapped by U.S. Representatives Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., and Judy Biggert, R-Ill., to examine wastewater treatment technologies used by BP.
Purdue researchers have met with those from Argonne to divvy up the workload and assign responsibilities, with the Water Institute taking the lead, said George Nnanna, Institute interim director.
The Indiana Department of Environmental Management has quickly become the least popular kid in school -- at least while the Governor is out of the country fiddling about -- and the lack of love for our state's environmental oversight agency was shown in full force during a meeting in Elkhart last night. It seems that the VIM Recycling plant has been emitting a less-than-healthy looking dust into the surrounding community, and a recent deadly fire has prompted citizens and legislators to angrily question when IDEM is going to assert their authority in the matter. Kudos to Rep. Craig Fry for sticking up for his constituents. Too bad we don't have a Governor who is willing to do something like this:
"I'm with these people," Fry said Tuesday referring to the residents. "We have good and bad corporate citizens in this state.
"A man died and you didn't pause and remember him," he said of the fire. "I am angry and embarrassed for state government!"
Fry was met with an uproarious round of applause, and when Mike Aylesworth, director of IDEM's northern regional office accused him of postulating, Fry shouted, "Don't accuse me of postulating again. I will not tolerate that.
[...]
But IDEM representatives said that they're not certain the dust collection is from the plant. It could also be from nearby rail yards which also generate dust.
As for the odors, IDEM has no regulations on odors because they have not been proven in a scientific manner to be a health hazard, Aylesworth explained.
To summarize: "We don't know where all of this potentially unhealthy dust is coming from, so don't expect us to do anything about it."
This new Associated Press piece doesn't really offer any new information, but it enjoyed pretty wide circulation this morning so I'll pass it along:
State officials said the limits were more stringent than federal rules and would not harm the lake. Environmentalists and officials in Illinois and Michigan objected, saying that allowing BP to increase the amount of pollution it discharges could threaten efforts in recent decades to reduce pollution.
"Indiana says, 'Well, we did everything by the book.' Well, OK, the books allow for a lot of discretion. But the books don't really say you ought to expand and almost borderline abuse that discretion," said Cameron Davis, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
The threat of legal action prompted BP to announce in late August that it would adhere to its old permit, with lower discharge limits, in order to avoid "regulatory uncertainty." BP said it would seek technological solutions so it can move ahead with the $3.8 billion expansion, which would enable the refinery to process heavy Canadian crude oil and increase production of motor fuels by about 15 percent.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, meanwhile, has ordered a review of state laws covering Great Lakes water quality and permits.
The Governor's office will undoubtedly undertake an experiment in revisionist history to try and make their guy look like he was above the fray, but it is critical we remember that Mitch Daniels had no qualms attacking his concerned constituents before he knew that this was a losing battle. He called the people signing the petition to stop the dumping simply "emotional," and brashly asserted that he didn't have any knowledge of technologies that could help clean the output of sludge from the facility. He didn't have that knowledge because he refused to look, and no matter how much he tries to portray himself as innocent in this debate, I doubt the voters surrounding Lake Michigan will forget that any time soon.
A tip o' the hat to Marcia Oddi over at the Indiana Law Blog for pointing us to an article written by The Economist that discusses the ongoing feud between the citizens around Lake Michigan, British Petroleum, and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management:
The brawl has made two things clear. First, there is widespread hostility to polluting any of the five Great Lakes, which supply drinking water to some 30m Americans, not to mention many Canadians, each year. Second, despite the common desire to keep the lakes clean, there is confusion over who is in charge of doing so. Of the many rules that limit pollution to the lakes, the most important is the Clean Water Act. But implementing it remains as tricky as ever.
The act, which was passed in 1972, aims "to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation's waters." It does this, in part, by regulating so-called "point source" polluters, such as factories or refineries. Each state creates its own standards for water quality-these must be at least as stringent as those set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-and issues permits to regulate discharges from such sources.
Of course, some states are stricter than others. Indiana gave a permit to BP that allows it to increase emissions of ammonia and suspended solids (critics call it sludge) by 54% and 35% respectively. Lawyers at the Environmental Law and Policy Centre protest that this defies a basic provision of the Clean Water Act, that states cannot let pollution rise. But there is a loophole: a state may in some cases allow a facility to increase pollution, though not past federal limits, if it is able to show that more filth is necessary to produce an important economic or social benefit.
(I am also confused as to what is going on with this. Bumped from the user diaries. - promoted by Thomas)
Jeff Burton at The Times is reporting that at last night's IDEM Air Pollution Control Board Meeting in Portage, a preliminary rule change was passed, restricting particulate matter output, that would affect BP and other concerns around the state.
The rule change approved Wednesday calls for particulate matter changes for 72 sources around the state and an additional 32 sources in Lake County.
The draft rule, "Amendments to 326 IAC 6.5 and 326 IAC 6.8 Particulate Matter Limitations for Specific Sources and Repeal of Numerous Sections, LSA #04-279," can be viewed (pdf file) here, as can this (pdf file) fact sheet.
The kicker, though, is that BP seems to be arguing they've already reduced their air emissions, and shouldn't have the variance they were granted rolled back.
However, go to a different news source, and the story gets muddier.
BP and IDEM argued that emission reductions and shutdowns of some refinery units make up for the request to keep emissions at other units the same.
There's a huge difference in the reporting between The Times and the Post-Tribune. While The Times reports,
Should a rule preliminarily adopted Wednesday by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's Air Pollution Control Board reach final adoption, the plant would be required to reduce its air particle output by 56 percent.
the Post-Tribune reports,
BP Whiting Refinery will reduce its emissions of tiny particles into the air by 380 tons annually.
But, then again, The Times says,
The plant, however, might already be in compliance, as some sources of pollution are no longer in use, rendered obsolete because of changing technology and a shift in fuels the processes.
Which is it? They will cut back on emissions? They won't? They already are? They might? They still want their variance permitting more pollution? They don't need it?
I'm hoping someone can make heads or tails of the conflicting reports of the same meeting. I'm thoroughly confused and annoyed with my local papers this morning.
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