[chimera]

This story has been posted before. The NYT is just now awakening to the fact that this problem is due in large part to EPA-mandated "pollution control". The town of Cheshire is suffering in part because of environmentalist-mandated actions. Under certain conditions the systems produce the effects noted in the article. If you want to scrub sulfur out of the flue gases, you have to pay a price.

We had a similar situation in my city a few years ago. The wackos were all hot to trot and giddy and wetting themselves about "cogeneration" and using trash to burn in a power plant to make electricity, reducing the need for some coal-burning and that nasty nue-que-ler stuff. They said it would save landfill space. Great idea. The county floated a few hundred million in bonds to build the trash burner. Guess what? A few years later, the wackos sued to get the thing shut down, which it did, and now it sits rusting. The reason? Air pollution, and dioxin emissions. The regulators (with the wackos' blessing) ratcheted the emissions limits down to where there was nothing that could be down to meet them other than bulldoze the facility. The taxpayers got stuck with the bill. Does anyone blame the wackos? Do the wackos admit to any error? That's like asking, does Clinton ever tell the truth...?

[gilor]

Did a search and could find it, so I posted it...oops. In my area (NE PA) we have a whole bunch of cogen plants, burning remnants left by the coal industry. They are relativly clean and nobody fusses. Thank God we don't have too many enviro wackos up here.