Lean Air Act Amendments require power plants across the nation to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. The amendments also impose tougher emissions standards for passenger cars and light trucks. These measures will reduce significantly the pollutants that contribute to acid rain formation. In Ohio, coal going to be burned has to have be very clean. If the coal doesnt come out of the coal pits clean then it must be washed. This also has a lot to do with the economical issue of acid rain. This extra process adds more cost to coal production and also lessens the amount of revenue coming back to the coal companies. In Texas, you have to have a specific permit issued to the company by a permitting office to produce anything harmful to the environment. If the company does anything that might break the permit the company is fined heavily and sometimes may not be able to renew the permit, depending on how bad the offense was.(Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, page 1-2) The Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) has worked to reduce acid rain by restricting the amount of sulfur allowed in the coal burned by power plants and other industrial sources. In the Baltimore-Washington area, where pollution is concentrated, plants may burn only coal with one percent sulfur or less. In rural locations, a maximum sulfur content of two percent is allowed.For someone to totally understand the problem we have with coal burning we must first look at the social and ethical problems. Coal is our main producer of electricity as we learned in our class. If we were to cut out the burning of coal our society would simply die. Our technology is not good enough yet to find a good enough alternative resource to produce the amount of power our society needs. Our society doesnt need all this power but until everyone starts to conserve energy we will need large amounts of energy. There are also some ethical issues that deal w...
