Air

"Edison International announced Wednesday that Midwest Generation will shutter Chicago's Fisk and Crawford coal plants in September, ahead of schedule and years before a state-imposed deadline to clean up or shut down the plants.

"A decade after landmark toxic-air monitoring prompted a city crackdown on chemical emissions, a new analysis shows significant improvement in some areas — but still cause for concern in neighborhoods near western Louisville’s Rubbertown industries."

"WASHINGTON -- Oil and gas companies will have to capture toxic and climate-altering gases from wells, storage sites and pipelines under new air quality standards issued on Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency. The rule is the first federal effort to address serious air pollution associated with the natural gas drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which releases toxic and cancer-causing chemicals like benzene and hexane, as well as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas."

"After dropping for two years during the recession, emissions of the gases blamed for global warming rose in 2010 as the economy heated up, the Environmental Protection Agency reports. Output of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gasses were up 3.2 percent from 2009 as the nation climbed slowly out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the E.P.A. said."

"On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce the first national rules to reduce air pollution at hydraulically fractured -- fracked -- wells and some other oil and gas industry operations. The agency estimated that the plan it proposed in July would reduce smog-forming, cancer-causing and climate-altering pollutants from the natural gas industry by about one-fourth."

"Durham School Services will pay a $90,000 federal fine and do environmental projects worth $348,000 to settle charges that it routinely allowed its school buses to idle excessively in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. The company operates in 30 states and has one of the largest school-bus fleets in the nation."

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"The nonprofit group Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency today to force the regulation of lead emissions from general aviation aircraft under the Clean Air Act."

"Most of the biggest polluting industrial boilers are in manufacturing states east of the Mississippi River, but 68 dot the West coast states."