Cement, Energy and Environment

ash contains arsenic, selenium, and other contaminants that can be damaging. The EPA found elevated levels of metals such as arsenic after the spill, though it said that municipal drinking water was safe. Companies such as Lafarge SA (LG) have gone to the White House to warn that regulating coal-waste as a hazardous material would create a stigma around reusing the waste for other purposes, even if the EPA decides to exempt coal ash when it is recycled into other products. More than 40 per cent of coal waste is recycled, added to products such as cement and drywall, a practice known as beneficial reuse. The rest is disposed of in landfills or retention ponds. The White House has held weekly meetings on the subject, a review that has delayed release of the EPA proposal, which was supposed to happen by December. The issue has also prompted lobbying by the American Coal Ash Association, which has lined up support in Congress and warned against events in Washington that threaten the very survival of a multibillion dollar industry. Courtesy: International Country Profile INDUSTRY CORRUPTION, SHODDY CONSTRUCTION CONTRIBUTED TO HAITI QUAKE DEVASTATION On 12 January 2010, a massive 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit the Caribbean island of Haiti. Within a week, another earthquake of 6.1 magnitude hit the island. The International Red Cross estimated that about three million people were affected by the quake, and the Haitian Interior Minister believes that more than 200 000 have died. The death toll is expected to continue to rise in the coming days. The situation will be worsened, in large part, because of corruption and the resulting shoddy construction practices in the nation, according to Professor Roger Bilham, seismologist with the University of Colorado at Boulder, United States. The earthquake occurred along what is known as a 'strike-slip zone', similar to the San Andreas Fault in California, where one side of a vertical fault moves past another one, he said. 'Porte-au-Prince (the capital of Haiti) is probably one of the worst constructed cities in the world, and even the FIMI (Federation of Indian Mineral Industries) News Bulletin, Feb 1, 2010, P19. ·~t presidential palace collapsed,' said Bilham. 'An earthquake near a major city on one of several faults bounding the edge of the Caribbean Plate is one that many of us were expecting sooner or later.' Bilham said that one of the chief causes of the high destruction and fatality rates in Haiti and other developing countries is due in large part to the corruption in the construction industry. One of the problems is bribery, which often takes the form of corrupt awards of construction projects, corrupt issuance of permits and approval documents, and corrupt inspection practices. Cameron Sinclair, Executive Director of Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit design group based in San Francisco, said he was 'horrified' when he visited Port-au-Prince and Gonaives last October to assess the quality of construction there . He said that the design and construction were far worse than in other developing countries he had visited. 'In Haiti, most if not all of the buildings have major engineering flaws,' he said . Many other concrete roofs presumably collapsed, adding to the loss of life. Sinclair said that he had seen houses where builders put concrete roofs on top of low-grade blocks. 'Then it just pancakes,' he said Courtesy: TerraGreen, February 2010,P7. I • INDIA: AMENDMENTS TO ENERGY ACT CLEARED The Union Cabinet has approved amendments to the Energy Conservation Act, 2001 , to introduce the system of issuing energy-saving certificates (ESCs) t0 be traded in the domestic market. The 'Perform, Achieve, and Trade'mechanism would assign REGULATION NEWS energy-efficiency improvement targets to the country's most energy-intensive industrial units with the provision of allowing them to retain any energy– efficiency improvements in excess of their target in the form of ESCs. The units will also be allowed to use purchased certificates to meet their greenhouse gas em1ss1on targets. The provision for such a mechanism was made under the National Mission on Enhanced Energy Efficiency. The industries that could benefit from these certificates are steel, cement, and aluminium. Courtesy: REGULATERI: Quarterly Review of Regulatory Developments, Issue 43, December 2009, Pl. 64