ABOVE: Buffalo & Pittsburgh train PSDB enters the yard at DuBois, Pa., to change crews and reverse direction. The train loaded at Rosebud Mining’s Lady Jane preparation plant in Penfield, Pa., and is destined to the Homer City Generating Station. RIGHT: Coal trains pass on Norfolk Southern’s former Pennsylvania Railroad mainline in Cresson, Pa. The train on the right loaded at Amfire Mining’s Sonman Slope tipple on the Bens Creek Industrial Track. The train on the left loaded at one of the mines on R.J. Corman’s Pennsylvania Line. RJC purchased the “Clearfield Cluster” in 1995 for nearly scrap value as Conrail’s strategic planners did not see those mines having long term viability at sale time. Sonman Mine has since been sold to Rosebud and is still active.
Coke is used in the blast furnace as a fuel and a reducing agent in the smelting of iron ore to make steel. And steel is one of the most important base commodities of our economy.
MATS and the Clean Air Act In October 1948, an atmospheric
result 20 people died from asphyxiation and more than 7,000 of the town’s 14,000 residents became ill. This incident and several others prompted the federal government to examine air pollution, and the result was the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. During the 1960s, Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-Maine) held congressional hearings that brought about the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970. That same year Congress created the Environmental
inversion occurred in the Monongahela River Valley near Donora, Pa., which trapped smoke laden with sulfur dioxide (SO2
) and zinc dust for five days. As a 30 JANUARY 2016 •
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Protection Agency (EPA) to administer provisions of the newly enacted laws. Growing concerns over acid rain and other environmental issues resulted in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which included the first attempt at specific emissions reductions in an effort to mitigate acid rain. A market-based “cap and trade” program was developed to lower SO2
emissions by approximately
half of the level of 1990 emissions. Any fossil-fueled electric generating unit (EGU) with a nameplate rating of 25 megawatts or more was automatically enrolled by EPA in the acid rain program (ARP). Each unit was given allowances based on the 1990 baseline; an allowance allowed the right to emit one ton of SO2
. In order to level the playing field,
each EGU was required to install a Continuous Emissions Monitoring System (CEMS) to measure sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides (NOx) and a Data Acquisition and Handling System (DAHS) to record hourly data for each pollutant. EPA developed standardized data substitution routines to account for missing data periods to make sure each facility did not under-report. Allowances could be sold or traded among the sources, and transactions were administered by the Chicago Board of Trade. The market-based trading program did not specify how each individual facility was to comply with the new rules. In order for a power plant to reduce its SO2
emissions it had two primary options: install pollution control
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