clean air act

Alcoa settles with U.S. Justice Dept. over polluting aluminum facility

The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency today announced a major Clean Air Act settlement with Alcoa, Inc. under which the company will spend an estimated $330 million to install a new coal-fired power plant with state-of-the-art pollution controls to eliminate the vast majority of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from the power plant at Alcoa’s aluminum production facility in Rockdale, Texas.

U.S. settles Clean Air Act case against Toyota

The Department of Justice and the Environment Protection Agency finalized yesterday a settlement of the government’s lawsuit against Toyota Motor Corporation for Clean Air Act violations involving 2.2 million vehicles manufactured between 1996 and 1998. Under the settlement, Toyota will spend $20 million on a supplemental environmental project to retrofit up to 3,000 public diesel fleet vehicles to make them run cleaner and extend the emission control system warranty on affected vehicles. In addition, Toyota will accelerate its compliance with certain new emission control requirements, and pay a $500,000 civil penalty. The settlement will cost Toyota an estimated $34 million.

Study: Clean air act reduces acid rain

The federal Clean Air Act of 1990 appears to be successful in reducing two major types of air pollutants that contribute to acid rain, and signs of recovery are beginning to occur in lakes and streams in the Midwest and East, according to a report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Steve Kahl, director of the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine, led the EPA research effort in New England and helped to lead the team that wrote the report. Katherine Webster, UMaine assistant professor of biological sciences, was a co-author of the report.