In the news, 6/13/15

If you want to see how other people experience the Ohio River,  this might be the week for you.

You can catch this exhibit at the Weston Art Gallery in downtown Cincinnati, which explores the relationship between people and bodies of water.

Or there's this activity organized by the Lousville Water Company.

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In an unsurprising move, American Electric Power subsidiary Appalachian Power said it did not do cost estimates of updating several older, smaller power plants it closed recently because it already knew retrofitting them with modern pollution-control systems would be too expensive.

Among the plants Appalachian Power closed were Philip Sporn on the Ohio River and the Kanawha River plant on the Kanawha River.

The reason that was unsurprising was that AEP CEO Nick Akins told me a couple of years ago that plants have to be a certain size to justify the investment involved in cleaning the stack emissions, and the older, smaller plants AEP would be closing were too small to spend that much money on.

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The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources is taking bids again for the rights to drill under the Ohio River for natural gas.

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And Louisville is looking at tapping groundwater instead of Ohio River water as a new supply. Among other benefits, the city would not have to worry about the next chemical spill that comes down the river or filtering out phamarceuticals that get through sewage treatment plants.