2 districts funded
for cleaner buses
Two school districts have received $43,275 from the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality to reduce diesel emissions from school buses.
The Cedarville School District received $25,000, and the Heber Springs School District received $18,275. Both districts plan to replace one school bus with the funds.
The funds come from the Reduce Emissions from Diesels Program, also called Go RED!
The Environmental Quality Department has $18,000 remaining in its Go RED! fund to award by April 30, according to a news release.
Older diesel engines can emit large quantities of harmful substances, the news release states, such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and carbon monoxide.
"Those substances are linked to thousands of premature deaths, hundreds of thousands of asthma attacks and millions of lost work days," the release said.
Drop smog plan,
state urges EPA
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge issued a statement Friday urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its federal implementation plan regarding regional haze in the state, instead favoring the state plan.
The EPA is proposing a plan to implement law passed by Congress in the 1990s regarding visibility in national wildlife and wilderness areas.
Haze occurs when light passes through certain particles that absorb light rather than spread it, including sulfates, nitrates, organic carbon, black carbon and windblown soil.
The haze plan targets sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions with the aim of improving visibility in two Arkansas national wilderness areas -- Caney Creek and the Upper Buffalo River -- and two Missouri parks -- the Hercules-Glades Wilderness Area and the Mingo National Wildlife Refuge.
The plan would likely require retrofitting emissions-reducing scrubbers on nine units at six power plants or an equivalent emissions-reducing measure. It also presents options that may include scrubbers for two units at the Independence power plant in Newark, which is not required to be a part of the plan.
But installing scrubbers could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and business representatives have urged the EPA not to include the Independence plant in its final plan.
Such scrubbers work to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions, bearing little impact on the carbon emissions also being targeted by EPA rule-making.
The Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality developed a plan using input from utilities, but the EPA partially disapproved of that plan in 2012. The department did not submit another one.
Utility officials have said the state and federal plans are largely similar except for the inclusion of the Independence plant in Newark in the federal plan.
On Friday, Department of Environmental Quality Director Becky Keogh said EPA had extended the public comment period into July, which had been requested by numerous businesses that wanted more time to review the plan.
Metro on 04/25/2015