Thursday, August 9, 2012

News update 8/9/12

It's been a while, but I'm taking a vacation day today and tomorrow so Adam and I can spend some time together before school starts on Monday.

Here are a few items I found that may prove interesting.

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Several years ago, I wrote a piece that the stuff that goes out the power plant stack is not the only pollution problem from burning coal. Sludge left over from the scrubbing process is one, and piles of coal ash are another. The National Geographic has written a piece about coal ash piles, and it includes a view of the Ohio River and a nearby ash pile from space.

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Here's a piece about a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous getting into the Ohio River, and thus into the Mississipi River delta, which is suffering from nutrient overload.

A few years ago, I talked with Charles Somerville, now dean of the College of Science at Marshall University, about some research he was doing on the Ohio River. Among other things, we talked about how the amount of fertilizer-based nutrients in the river went up sharply below the mouth of the Scioto River at Portsmouth, Ohio, because of agricultural runoff.

For what it's worth, I remember years go that bags of fertilizer my family bought had three numbers on them, which we referred to as N-P-K, for nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

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And I see that the tugboat Mr. Russell is headed backdown the Ohio again. The last I saw, it was in the upper part of the Willow Island pool. If anyone gets pictures of it, I would be willing to post them on here, giving proper credit, of course. There's a chance Adam and I will see it tomorrow.

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