The layoffs will follow 300 retirements already announced for this summer, leaving about 300 workers at a fuel-loading facility that will stay open a few more years. For the second year in row, the Muncie Sanitary District found its grant requests for equipment cut. Columbus-based Power Plant Information Committee helped form People s Energy Campaign to monitor energy developments on the state level. LS Power has temporarily withdrawn state and local permits to await changes in the Legislature. Electricity produced by merchant plants must be sold on the wholesale market.
Investors pay for construction of merchant plants, whereas consumers pay for traditional plants.
The House voted last night to block the Environmental Protection Agency from identifying regions with dangerously high smog levels, a move aimed at preventing federal regulators from enforcing tough new clean air rules. With the backing of 58 Democrats, House Republicans won support for a measure postponing an EPA initiative to improve air quality damaged by emissions from factories and automobiles. While the EPA effort is already subject to a court challenge, lawmakers were so anxious about making their disapproval clear that they told the agency that it may not even use its data to say which communities are failing to meet clean air standards. The provision on the EPA was attached to a spending bill for veterans and housing programs on a 226 to 199 vote and came as part of a renewed congressional assault on the agency. House Republicans, in particular, are eager to restrain the Clinton administration from imposing broad new environmental rules in its final months.