Environment

The need for more sophisticated pollution controls at power plants as led to an increased demand for limestone. And a quarry in Meade County has installed new equipment to meet that demand.

Power plants have to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, and one popular way of doing that is running it through layers of crushed limestone mixed with water. The sulfur dioxide bubbles through the high-calcium limestone, and doesn’t go out the smokestack.

The Air Pollution Control District is forecasting high levels of ozone on Saturday. This marks the fourth consecutive day of Air Quality Alerts: there's already an alert in place today, and alerts were issued on Wednesday and Thursday. The air turned out to be normal on Wednesday, but ozone levels were slightly elevated yesterday.

So far this year, there have been 26 air quality alerts, but not all of those days have actually resulted in bad air.

Several residents near the Cane Run Power Station are angry after Louisville Gas & Electric employees walked onto their property without permission to collect dust samples off their homes.

An updated federal report shows that more than one-third of Indiana is still in at least extreme drought even though recent rainfall has improved conditions for much of the state.

The new U.S. Drought Monitor report released today says about 11 percent of Indiana is in the worst category with exceptional drought. That designation covers much of the state's southwestern corner from around Terre Haute to north of Evansville.

A federal judge has ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority is responsible for a massive coal ash spill near Knoxville in 2008.

Louisville's string of forecasted bad air days continues tomorrow with another Air Quality Alert--for the third consecutive day this week.

Elevated levels of ozone were also predicted yesterday (even though there was no actual ozone exceedence) and there's an Air Quality Alert in effect today. Tomorrow, the Air Quality Index is forecast to be 101, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups.