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SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

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The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

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Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

“Shame” as EPA Eases Up on NY Cement-Making Air Pollution

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Wednesday, June 27, 2012   

ALBANY, N.Y. - As a federal court was upholding the Environmental Protection Agency's greenhouse gas regulations Tuesday, people who live near the LaFarge cement plant in Ravena, south of Albany, were denouncing a proposal by the same agency to further delay emissions standards to minimize cement plants' air pollution by 2013.

Cement plants run by the LaFarge company nationwide were under orders to cut back dangerous mercury emissions, but the cement industry has been fighting back. This week, the EPA said it would push back the deadline another two years, until 2015.

Susan Falzone, who lives across the Hudson River from the plant in Ravena, is dismayed.

"It's a shame and I don't understand what the rationale behind this is, other than pressure from the industry."

The EPA says extending the compliance date would allow industry "to reassess their emission-control strategies," and says that, based on new technical information, it will propose adjusting the way cement kilns continuously monitor for particle pollution in addition to mercury.

An attorney working on behalf of groups that want to stop cement plant emissions, Jim Pew of Earthjustice, says the EPA's statement and decision baffle him.

"That's something that's really worthy of George Orwell. What they're really saying is that they are going to weaken the standards and then they're going to give industry more time to do less, to control their pollution."

Falzone directs a local group, Friends of Hudson, which has been trying for more than a decade to stop the Ravena plant from spewing toxic emissions.

"Mercury, as we all know, is a very serious neurotoxin. It's very damaging to pregnant women, to unborn babies and to young children. We're also talking about other emissions that are dangerous for people's respiratory and cardiac health."

Pew says the EPA itself said the regulations would have enormous benefit, saving up to 2,500 lives a year. He agrees with Falzone that a "rich, well-connected industry got its way with government," and he doubts the details will ever emerge.


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