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Saturday, March 19, 2005

Environment - Several stories today involving neighboring states

"Sewage sludge may be shipped to W. Kentucky" is the headline to a story today in the Louisville Courier Journal. The report begins:

Nashville's partially treated sewage sludge, which has raised a stink in Tennessee because of strong odors, may be headed to Western Kentucky.

Kentucky regulators are weighing whether to allow as much as 500 tons of sludge a day to be sent from two Nashville wastewater treatment plants to a rural corner of Hopkins County, about 14 miles south of Madisonville, where it would be buried for final treatment and later dug up and used to help reclaim strip-mined land.

Hopkins County Judge-Executive Patricia Hawkins was not available yesterday and a reporter was referred to sanitation supervisor Broc Oglesby.

He said he learned of the proposal Thursday from an anonymous tip, and that he expects local residents won't be pleased when word gets out.

"I'd guess they'd be furious," he said, adding that he's referred the matter to the county attorney for advice on whether local gov- ernment has any say in the matter. "Nobody wants to be dumped on."

A Washington Post story today reports that:
An Ohio company will pay $1.1 billion in fines and cleanup costs at four power plants in the second-largest federal settlement with an electric utility over air pollution.

The case, filed in 1999 against FirstEnergy Corp.'s W.H. Sammis plant north of Steubenville, Ohio, was the first involving dozens of Midwest plants to go to trial over accusations that the plants spewed dirty air that caused smog and health problems in the Northeast.

A federal judge in Columbus, Ohio, ruled in August 2003 after a three-week trial that Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy had violated the Clean Air Act by making physical changes at its coal-fired plant without upgrading pollution controls.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 19, 2005 08:12 PM
Posted to Environment