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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Small Industrial Boilers: A Big Burden on Indiana's Air?

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Monday, March 5, 2012   

INDIANAPOLIS - It's considered by some to be one of the biggest toxic pollution problems that people don't know about. And a new report is examining the health risks for Hoosiers associated with the emissions from industrial boilers, the so-called "personal power plants" of major industrial operations.

A report from Earthjustice finds these boilers are releasing millions of pounds of toxic pollutants into the air, including 950 pounds of mercury each year in Indiana alone. Earthjustice staff attorney Jim Pew says that much mercury can do a lot of damage.

"Less than a teaspoon, a 70th of a teaspoon, is enough to contaminate a 20-acre lake badly enough that the fish in that lake are unsafe to eat. And that's especially relevant for mercury because it's by eating fish that people are exposed to mercury emissions."

Among the states, Indiana ranks first for boiler emissions of mercury, fifth for lead and second for chromium.

Pew says that in 2011 the EPA revised Clean Air Act emission standards for these on-site industrial power plants, but some of the companies are fighting back on Capitol Hill.

"They're trying to get these limits killed off in Congress, and unfortunately what they're doing is a technique called 'riders.' They're trying to attach a pollution loophole to just about every important piece of legislation that passes by."

The Earthjustice report lists Indiana's top industrial power plant polluters as U.S. Steel in Gary, ArcelorMittal in Burns Harbor, Alcoa Warrick operations in Newburgh, American Electric Power's Rockport plant and Citizens Thermal C.C. Perry K steam plant in Indianapolis.

The EPA is preparing tighter boiler air pollution standards that will bring industrial plants into Clean Air Act compliance like other power plants. Some in the industry say the planned federal rules could slow economic growth.

The report is at tinyurl.com/78ngj9a




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