Environment

Ohio River regulators have voted unanimously to allow a West Virginia company five more years to comply with new, more stringent pollution requirements.

Over the past several months, there have been worries that two big aluminum smelters in western Kentucky will shut down. Rio Tinto-Alcan has a plant in Sebree (Webster County) and Century Aluminum has a plant in Hawesville (Hancock County).

Louisville’s solid waste board is set to vote on the city’s five-year plan at the end of this month. If it passes, residents could see changes in how their trash is handled and recycled.

The plan includes three big ideas: banning plastic bags for use with yard waste, allowing citizens to place food scraps at the curb for composting and setting hard limits on how much trash can be thrown out—and charging extra for more trash.

A Circuit Court judge has signed the settlement that a coal company, the commonwealth and environmental groups agreed to last week.

Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities are terminating the company’s contract with coal producer Consol Energy.

This news in and of itself isn’t huge—to put it in perspective, LG&E/KU burns 16 million tons of coal a year, and the company’s contract with Consol was only for 500,000 tons. But it was a good excuse to take a look at how the utility uses coal, and how its usage might change in the future.

Coal's role in this year's presidential election isn't going ignored by national media. Marketplace Morning Report had an interesting story this morning by Adriene Hill about the fuel's prominent role in President Obama and Mitt Romney's Ohio campaign strategies...even though there are less than 3,000 coal miners in the state. As the industry is always quick to point out, that doesn't include jobs that are related to and reliant on the coal industry.