Smokestack

Louisville Metro Government is getting $200,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to create a master plan for an area of the city that abuts a rail corridor.

Environmental activist and Louisville attorney Tom FitzGerald says he is being encouraged to run against Republican Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky 2014 U.S. Senate race.

The 58-year-old Democrat currently serves as executive director of the Kentucky Resources Council, an environmental group that lobbies state lawmakers on conservation issues.

In a telephone interview, FitzGerald told WFPL the decision is still in its early stages and leaving the non-profit world would be a significant change.

"For me to go into electoral politics and partisan politics is a very different way of approaching public service. I have a real fondness and appreciation for the amazing people of this Commonwealth and I've devoted my adult life to try to improve the quality of the community's health," he says.

Once again, the Louisville area's air has been ranked among the worst in the nation by the American Lung Association. The organization released it's annual State of the Air report today.

Louisville has been chosen to participate in the first group of cities included in Portland State University’s Urban Sustainability Accelerator Program. The program will provide the city with technical assistance to implement green infrastructure initiatives. 

Call it a battle of the researchers. Scientists who have both affirmed and denied connections between mountaintop removal coal mining and serious health problems have intensified their efforts to bring public attention to their work recently. Today, a commission of scientists released an analysis of some of the recent research, and concluded that there should be a moratorium on mountaintop removal.

Over the past few years, researchers have found links between surface coal mining and maladies like asthma, COPD, birth defects and cancer. The coal industry has largely dismissed the results of those studies, arguing that the researchers are biased and the findings aren’t scientifically sound. Now, the Center for Health, Environment and Justice has formed an independent commission to review the current research and offer recommendations.

A federal appeals court says the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t overstep its authority when it vetoed a permit for a coal mine in West Virginia.

The Army Corps of Engineers issued a water pollution permit to Arch Coal in 2007 for the Spruce Number One Mine, a 2300-acre mine in Logan County, West Virginia. It would have been the largest mountaintop removal mine in Appalachia. But four years later, the EPA vetoed the permit—only the 13th time its exercised its veto power since 1972.

An appeals court has ruled in favor of environmental groups that argued the streamlined permit the government used to permit mountaintop removal mines wasn’t protective of the environment.

The decision was issued today by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. It finds that the U.S. Army Corps’ issuance of the streamlined “Nationwide 21” permit is in violation of the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s analysis of soil near Louisville’s former Black Leaf Chemical Plant continues, but the agency still isn’t sure how much of the contamination of nearby land—including some private lawns—can be blamed on the plant. And now, an agency spokesman says some of the preliminary results suggest one of the most prevalent chemicals found might not have come from the facility at all.