Friday, August 7, 2009

Its A Whole New Ballgame

I have taken a long respite to gather my thoughts and decide where I want to go with this blog. The original intent was to follow the federal CAMR and the individual States laws pertaining to compliance with it. Since we all know the CAMR was vacated and all attempts to resurrect it have been dropped it presented a fork in my road.

I could either stop blogging on Mercury Emissions or refocus the effort on what legislation is now moving through the halls of EPA. After much debate, all between me myself and I, I have decided to continue on and follow the mercury emission news. This broad decision still needed refining. One thing I learned in blogging on "All Things Mercury" is, there are many fronts on which the battle against mercury in our environment is being fought.

There are daily articles on mercury in CFLs, mercury in dental amalgum, mercury in immunization shots, mercury from crematoria, mercury in automobile switches, mercury in fish, mercury in old lab instruments and even mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup. This extensive coverage of mercury in the news seems to be getting enough coverage that I am going to leave it to others to report on those issues. I of course have opinions on all of them and they are all important topics, but it is my biggest interest to cover mercury emissions and mainly those emissions from large smoke stacks like those found in coal fired utilities, cement plants, incinerators etc.

With that in mind we will be picking up on the Utility MACT process which includes, among many other things, mercury from coal fired EGUs. We'll follow the EPA regulations relating to cement plants, an industry that has long been a battlefront between environmentalists and EPA regarding mercury emissions and now is in the crosshairs of the new administration. I hope to also cover the final stages of mercury being totally eliminated from the chlorine production process at the last few chlor-alkali plants left in the nation still using the antiquated process, shame on them for continuing to needlessly poison their communities.

I apologize for leaving my post for so long, but I needed to regroup, recharge and refocus. I believe I have done that and feel I am back and ready to follow the exciting world of mercury emissions.

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