Montgomery official proposes carbon tax on major emitters

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clipped from www.washingtonpost.com As drops in buckets go, this is very small drop in a very big bucket. Just in time for Earth Day, Montgomery County Council member and longtime energy lawyer Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda) is proposing an excise tax on major carbon emitters in the county. He said his goal is to spur faster action to address global warming. And if he can raise millions of dollars a year with the carbon tax, he said, that will be another welcome byproduct. The proposal would put a $5 tax on each ton of carbon dioxide sent skyward by "major emitters." In Montgomery, that means one facility: the 843-megawatt Dickerson generating plant that Mirant runs near Poolesville. Mirant officials appear ready for a fight. The firm generates power across Maryland, in Alexandria, in California and beyond. Asked whether company executives are prepared to pay the tax, a Mirant spokeswoman said simply: "No."

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Blizzards pound snowbound Mid-Atlantic to New York

clipped from news.yahoo.com WASHINGTON – Snow, wind and slush hounded eastern commuters Wednesday as blizzard warnings from Baltimore to New York City heralded the second major storm in a region already blanketed by historic weekend snowfalls More than 10 inches of new snow fell before dawn in parts of Maryland that had received up to 30 inches just a few days earlier. Plows and salt spreaders fought heavy snow in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where the flakes briefly turned to rain to make a slushy mix. Heavy snow collapsed part of the roof and a wall at a Smithsonian Institution storage building in Suitland, Md. Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas said they don't believe there was any damage to artifacts from the National Air and Space Museum, but officials were unable to go inside because the building is unstable. "My brain is a little frozen," he said.

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Hundreds of thousands without power after Eastern snowstorm

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clipped from www.cnn.com (CNN) -- Air traffic in Washington picked up after a day of cancellations, but hundreds of thousands along the Eastern seaboard remained without power after a major snowstorm wound down. More than 300,000 people from Pennsylvania to Virginia were without electricity Sunday morning, utility companies reported. The blizzard -- referred to as "snowmageddon" by President Obama -- brought down power lines across the region, and accumulated snow continued to cause outages. The utility company provides electricity to customers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia. More than 142,000 of its customers had no power; the majority of them, more than 90,000, reside in Pennsylvania, the company said. Record-breaking snowfall covered the Washington area, the weather service said. Over two days, 32.4 inches of snow dropped on Dulles International Airport, breaking a January 1996 record of 23.2 inches.

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