Dam Owner Education Program August 8 in Eastern Panhandle

      The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Dam Safety Program is sponsoring a one-day workshop for dam owners and monitors on Thursday, Aug.

8, at the Mountain Lake Club near Charles Town. 

The workshop, which will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., is designed to provide practical information on topics of importance to anyone who owns or monitors a dam. Topics to be covered include: Dam Safety Act and rule; owner responsibilities and liabilities; basic terminology; causes of dam failures; emergency action plan guidance for dam monitors; maintenance problems and solutions; and remediation projects, hiring an engineer, costs.

The early registration fee is $25. It will cost $35 at the door. As part of the registration fee, workshop participants will receive a CD-ROM with the presentations and other valuable resources. To register, or for more information, contact the WVDEP’s Anita Chapman at 866-568-6649, ext. 1006 or email Anita.R.Chapman@wv.gov.

Australia Moving From Carbon Tax To CarbonTrading

Last year Australia adopted a carbon tax, one that hasn't been too well received. It was a pretty hefty tax of about $24 Aus, much higher than about any other country.  Green feeling evidently overcame rational thought, as Australia was hamstringing itself in the world markets. It was supposed to be spread out broadly among all the big companies, but as Phillip Hutchings learned, that wasn't the case.   Mr. Hutchings provides an excellent analysis of the carbon tax here.

The Australian government has retreated, and will be moving to a carbon trading system, in line with those in Europe and elsewhere. Australian politicians are now saying that the country  should be contributing to GHG reduction in a manner (and to a degree) consistent with other nations, which seems about right.  Platts has the story here The primary effect will be to drop the price for a ton of CO2 equivalent down to the European price of about $6 US, and it will probably drop further.  (I seem to recall that the US carbon trading market collapsed and trading was suspended a few years ago.)   .

Willis Eschenbach has calculated on Watts Up With That how much the province of British Columbia could reduce global warming by its efforts to be carbon free, and came up with a figure of .005 of a degree.  Are all these carbon schemes worth anything?

Coal - It's Not Just For Burning Anymore

Forbes magazine reminds us that coal isn't useful just for burning; it can also be the building block of structural and electrical components with interesting characteristics.   The West Virginia Coal Association reminds us that  coal can be foamed into insulation and other useful products.  Perhaps one day coal will be in greater demand as a source of  graphene and carbon fiber than for power generation.

Consol Shows Off State-Of-The-Art Water Treatment Plant

Consolidation Coal Company has recently unveiled a $200 million treatment  plant and pipeline system to handle acid water from numerous underground mines in the Morgantown area. Joselyn King of the Wheeling Intelligencer/Wheeling News Register reports on it here.  The treatment plant was a necessity if Consol was going to continue operatingits mines,  its willingness to construct the plant speaks volumes for its commitment to the area.

Of particular interest is the possible use of the treated water as frack water by the oil and gas industry. Given the plant's location in the heart of the liquids-rich portion of the Marcellus, that would seem like a great opportunity for Consol to recoup a small part of the cost of running the plant.

West Virginia Supreme Court Defines "Surface Only"

Years ago, in a poorly-written decision, the WV Supreme Court decided that a conveyance of "surface only" was inherently  ambiguous in the case of  Ramage v. South Penn Oil Co., 94 W.Va. 81, 118 S.E. 162 (1923).  In a recent well-written opinion by Justice Ketchum,  the Supreme Court reversed Syllabus Point 1 of Ramage and gave those words a reasonable, set definition.

The word “surface,” when used in an instrument of conveyance, generally means the exposed area of land, improvements on the land, and any part of the underground actually used by a surface owner as an adjunct to surface use (for example, medium for the roots of growing plants, groundwater, water wells, roads, basements, or construction footings).

You wouldn't think that "surface only", in a property conveyance, would be unclear, but you would be wrong. I have exactly this issue in a pending case, and I look forward to citing the court's decision.

The decision is Faith United Methodist v. Morgan, Case No. 12-0080 (June 13, 2013). Thanks to Tom Hurney for writing about this in one of  his excellent emails on behalf of the Defense Trial Counsel.

We Can't Predict the Climate

This is part of a comment from rgb at Duke, a commenter on Watts Up With That 

We cannot predict the climate. We cannot even predict the damn weather, not more than a week or so out. There are really good reasons we cannot predict the weather, and equally good reasons we cannot predict the climate. It is true that they aren’t quite the same problem, and sometimes one can predict the average behavior of a system in the long run (whatever that means) when one cannot predict its short time behavior at all reliably, but when I say we cannot predict the climate I mean that wecannot even understand the past behavior of the climate! We have no friggin’ idea why the MWP was warm, the LIA was cold, and why the world warmed (without CO_2 increase to drive it) since the Dalton minimum. We cannot predict the future state of one of the only important contributor of heat to the system, an enormously important cause whose effects on the Earth are complex and only beginning to be understood. To claim otherwise is an enormous act of intellectual hubris and scientific fraud — unless and until you can back up the claim with actual predictions, consistently validated. Or hey, I’d settle for a halfway decent hindcast or two, back to (say) 0 BCE or 16,000 BCE or 120,000 BCE or 50,000,000 BCE. The only thing we learn looking at the real climate record of the Earth is that it is always changing, that the changes are sometimes sudden and profound, and that we have no idea why they occurred or why they WERE either sudden, or gradual as the case may be, or gentle and moderate, or profound and catastrophic as the case may be.

Some of these things we are likely to never be able to properly prove or understandas the evidence is simply gone into the past. The Ordovician-Silurian transition — an ice age that began with 7000 ppm CO_2, and that peaked in glaciation a few million years later with CO_2 still at 4000 ppm. What’s up with that? Space aliens came and directed a freezing ray at the Earth, straight out of Buck Rogers? The Sun decided to turn off (partly) for a million years or so? A civilization consisting of highly evolved giant spiders had a nuclear war and triggered a nuclear winter a few million years long? Sure, we can propose more sensible alternatives, but honestly they will all still feel like science fiction, and in all probability none of them can either be verified/supported or falsified, at best they can be shown to be a consistent possibility.

Why is it so very difficult to say “we don’t know”?

rgb

There's more at his comment, found here, and go to June 5 at 5:12 pm

Morrisey and Huffman Respond To EPA SIP Call for Changes to Startup and Shutdown Events

            EPA has proposed significant  changes to the manner in which states manage their air pollution control programs.  Many states allow air emission sources to exceed air pollution permit limits during brief periods of equipment startup, shutdown and malfunction when there may be, for example, incomplete fuel combustion. As a result of a lawsuit by the Sierra Club, EPA now wants to require states to amend their State Implementation Plans (SIPs) to treat emissions exceedances during startups and shutdowns as violations.  (Exceedances may be allowed because of malfunctions, but only as a matter of enforcement discretion.)  EPA's fact sheet can be found here.

            The SIP Call identifies eight West Virginia regulations that would have to be revised to eliminate exemptions for startup and shutdown events.  On May 13, 2013 Randy Huffman, Director of the Department of Environmental Protection and Patrick Morrisey, Attorney General responded to EPA, objecting to EPA’s proposed rejection of the state regulations.  One of the principal contentions of EPA is that §302(k) of the Clean Air Act defines emission limitation as “a requirement established by the State with the Administrator which limits the quantity, rate, or concentration of air pollutants on a continuous basis. . .”   However, as Huffman and Morrisey pointed out, in the past EPA has not interpreted the word “continuous” to preclude higher emissions during SSM events.  They also noted: that EPA lacks the authority to issue a SIP Call because it had not made the necessary findings that changes in state regulations are needed; that the rule fails to comply with the federal Administrative Procedure Act; and that EPA had misconstrued West Virginia’s SSM emissions and greatly overstated the amount of discretion given the state to allow higher emissions during the SSM events.

            Several other states have joined West Virginia in opposing EPA’s rulemaking.  EPA will review the comments and then determine whether to proceed with the proposed rule.

            State Implementation Plans: Response toPetition for Rulemaking; Findings of Substantial Inadequacies; and SIP Calls toAmend Provisions Applying Access Emissions During Periods of Startup, Shutdown,and Malfunction.  78 Fed. Reg. 12460(Feb. 22, 2013) Air Docket No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2012-0322.