Ecology Law Currents is the online-only publication of Ecology Law Quarterly, one of the nation's most respected and widely read environmental law journals. Currents features short-form commentary and analysis on timely environmental law and policy issues.
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Sulfuric acid mist, also known as H2SO4
or SO3,[1]
is one of the least publicized air pollutants associated with emissions from
coal-fired power plants. Long overshadowed by nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide,
and carbon dioxide, sulfuric acid mist is typically not emitted in the
boundary-crossing and globe-altering quantities of the more frequently
discussed air pollutants. In the whirlwind of the United States Environmental
Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent air regulations of coal-fired power plants
including the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards for power plants (MATS), the New
Source Performance Standards and the Tailoring Rule for greenhouse gases, and
the recently vacated Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, sulfuric acid mist has
remained relatively untouched.[2]
But EPA’s regulations, which have imposed dramatic new emission limits on
sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, greenhouse gases, mercury, and hydrochloric
acid, are likely to have a significant impact on sulfuric acid mist emission
control strategies at coal-fired power plants.[3]
Sulfuric acid mist emissions from coal-fired power plants, which creates tell-tale blue plumes (not pictured here), has increasingly been under scrutiny by the EPA over the past decade. Photo credit to ribarnica.
While droughts and water supplychallenges have plagued California for decades, climate change will increase the strain on California’s water management system.[1]Seawaterdesalination—the process of removing salt and other minerals from seawater—is often hailed as the solution to the state’s water supply challenges.[2] However, proposals to build seawater desalination plants, which demand enormous quantities of energy, could be a shortsighted fix that will ultimately exacerbate climate change due to corresponding greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This article explores seawater desalination and alternative strategies for California to adapt to climate change, and concludes that an effective adaptation approach will require strategies to reduce GHG emissions.
Seawater desalination plant in South Korea. Photo credit to roplant.
Sea snot, tar balls, and designated oiled carcass holding locations are just a few of the many appalling and lingering consequences of the failure of BP’s Macondo well in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The catastrophe began on April 20, 2010 when the well’s blowout preventer failed and caused a fiery explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, the oil rig owned by Transocean and leased and operated by BP. The accident killed eleven rig workers and led to the largest oil spill in American history. Plugging the well took three months plus an additional two months to kill the well. Called an unprecedented environmental disaster by some and the Crime of the Century by others, BP’s oil spill resulted in an estimated total discharge of 4.9 million barrels (205.8 million gallons) of oil, largely unmitigated, into the Gulf of Mexico. While the precise cause of the well’s failure is still unknown, what has become evident is that the drilling plans for BP’s broken well never underwent full environmental review – a review that could have helped prepare the company and local and federal governments for such an eventual catastrophe.
Smoke plumes from spill-response crews gathering and burning oil in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the leaking Macondo well. Photo taken June 22, 2010. Photo credit to Dr. Oscar Garcia / Florida State University.
It’s no secret that the outgoing George W. Bush administration has been hostile to environmental interests. By all accounts the Obama administration will be different on that score (as on many others).
Before it can concentrate on its own new environmental priorities, though, the new administration will have to root out the counterproductive work of its predecessor. To some extent that’s just politics as usual and expected. Some degree of “policy whiplash” legitimately accompanies every presidential transition.
But this transition will be more complicated than usual. As it works to reverse a large number of specific Bush administration decisions, the Obama environmental team will also be battling a systemic problem at key federal environmental agencies. Career federal environmental scientists at both regulatory and research agencies are thoroughly demoralized, and a wide range of observers agree that science is not being used effectively in environmental policy decisions. The morale problem will be helped by case-by-case reversal of some of the most extreme Bush-era anti-environmental actions, but morale will not be fully restored until institutional systems are in place to make better use of scientific evidence and scientific personnel. That sounds easy, but it will take more than simply declaring a commitment to scientific integrity.
