Posted on 02/17/2011 6:46:56 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Two Central Valley biomass plants have agreed to pay more than $830,000 in fines for violating the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday.
“Today’s enforcement actions are a victory for human health,” Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest, said in a statement.
The plants in Chowchilla and El Nido, both owned by Global Ampersand, LLC, of Boston, were fined $343,000 and $492,000, respectively. Company representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
David Kim, assistant regional counsel for the EPA, said that the fines showed that even the renewable energy industry could run afoul of air pollution regulations.
“The renewable energy industry serves an important function in terms of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels,” Kim said, “but at the same time, they too, like all other industries, are subject to the Clean Air Act.”
The plants, according to the EPA, emitted nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide at excessive levels; did not perform tests to measure the amounts of air pollutants; did not install a control system for nitrogen oxides, which can form smog; and did not certify emissions monitoring systems.
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The plants burn agricultural waste from farms and construction debris to generate power – activities that would otherwise be subject to restrictions on open burning put in place by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which covers San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Madera, Fresno, Kings and Tulare Counties, and part of Kern County.
The EPA and the district announced the settlement after a joint investigation. The agencies will each take half of the fine revenue. The Chowchilla plant was fined an additional $15,000 for violations of district regulations.
(Excerpt) Read more at californiawatch.org ...
Insanity
Eco Irony Ping.
Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?
How much went to Obumblers election? They are still in business, right?
where’s the sympathy? vampires need someone to bleed.
Their point of view may be that the survival of these agencies is more important that generating electricity anyway.
Like they say, You can’t make this crap up.
And do what with it?......
If I ran a government funded $hit to fuel operation, the first thing my nonprofit a$$ would do is get as big of a fine as possible from the government apparatus. Then appeal to another apparatus for a bailout. For the children and whatnot.
Need you ask? Hire more people to go after yet more plants. Duh!
That, or pay bonuses to their administrators.
That as you say, as well as did SCAQMD years ago built themselves one “H” of an office complex in Diamond Bar allegedly with confiscated funding.
That was always the question....the EPA is a worthless organization and should have been done away with about 10 seconds after it was started....it is EXPENSIVE, arbitrary, meaningless, has too much power to inflict meaningless regulations on business, ineffectual and yet another reason to trim the federal government by 30% or more
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