Odds and ends, 5/6/09

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The West Virginia Turnpike isn’t the only toll road in the state’s future.

Department of Transportation spokesman Brent Walker said officials are talking about tolls for U.S. 35 between Winfield and the Ohio River.

Walker says money raised by tolls could be used to finance the last 14 miles of construction. County commissions in Mason and Putnam counties have already endorsed the idea.

Next year, motorists using the new Mon-Fayette Expressway between Morgantown and Pittsburgh will pay tolls for the Pennsylvania section of highway. There are no tolls for West Virginia’s section.

Talk of tolls comes as the agency that oversees the turnpike plans hearings to increase the tolls on the 88-mile highway, something that hasn’t happened in 28 years.

I hate to say it, but this makes sense. When roads cost $14 million a mile or more to build -- and when interchanges are prohibitively expensive -- it's reasonable to expect people who demand a new four-lane road to pay for it.

A lot of the traffic on 35 is truck, and those guys would use the toll road over the old road any day. Locals might divert across the river to State Route 62 (which I think was 35 before the Silver Bridge fell) to avoid the tolls.

Tolls are a good idea for any big new bridge across the Ohio River, too, as long as they are reasonable and are used only to pay the cost of construction. I'm open to using tolls to pay for maintenance, but toll money should be used only on the project for which it's collected.

Or am I wrong?

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — An Environmental Protection Agency official is telling energy industry officials to expect regulations on how to handle ash from coal-fired power plants.

The EPA official says that could include classifying coal ash as hazardous waste.

Matt Hale, director of the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, was speaking Tuesday at the World of Coal Ash conference in Lexington. The Courier-Journal reports that the conference is a gathering of more than 500 people from 21 countries who will discuss how to manage the waste. The U.S. on its own produces 125 million tons of the ash each year.

Coal ash came under scrutiny after a massive spill in eastern Tennessee in December. The spill spread 5.4 million cubic feet of ash sludge from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant across 300 acres.

This, too, makes sense. Power plants generate a lot of coal ash, and (as I understand it) regulations vary from state to state. Uniform rules across the nation make sense.

Regarding designating ash as a hazardous material, I would have to defer to the experts on that.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A poll finds that 46 percent of Ohio adults believe the economy will be worse for the next generation of workers than it is now.

I was writing that story a generation ago. If these fears are correct, that would be at least two generations that did not have as high a standard of living as the previous one.

In the old days, if your daddy could get you on at the nickel plant or the steel plant, you had it pretty good. In all likelihood, very few people in this area can count on that now.