I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The expansion of a coal-fired power plant in Utah has been blocked because the Environmental Protection Agency’s permit did not adequately take into account carbon dioxide emissions.
The Deseret News, one of Salt Lake City’s major dailies, reports that the decision yesterday by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board halts plans to expand the Bonanza Power Plant until the question of carbon dioxide emissions is further examined by the EPA. The expansion would emit an additional 3.37 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that the EPA not only had the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but that it could not sidestep its authority to do so unless it could demonstrate scientifically that carbon dioxide does not cause climate change.
Nonetheless, the agency has since issued permits for coal-fired power plants that did not consider CO2. An example is the proposed Desert Rock plant in the Four Corners region of New Mexico, which is a project of the same company — Sithe Global — that is seeking to expand the Bonanza Power Plant. The recent air-quality permit issued for the Desert Rock plant by the EPA does not regulate carbon dioxide.
The Desert Rock air-quality permit has been appealed to the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board as well, by the state of New Mexico plus conservation and Navajo community groups. One of the points of the appeal is the improper consideration of carbon dioxide emissions.
The national law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, identified by The Deseret News as a firm that represents electric utilities, said on its Web site that the Board’s decision to remand the permit for further consideration of CO2 rather than an order for the EPA to regulate CO2 “…places the extent to which EPA will regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act (CAA) squarely in the lap of the Obama Administration.”
