TUESDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2010 W REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN 5A

GAS: Station part of new network JUDGE: Parties

Continued from Page One

A mechanism of several towers

converts the liquid gas into
compressed gas, which is more
widely used in the state.
The Enviro Express station is
part of network of eight in the
state that now provide com-
pressed natural gas to vehicles.
Already, Malone said, he has a
commitment from AT&T to buy
compressed natural gas from
Enviro Express for 48 of the
company’s vans.
With no liquefied natural gas
stations for hundreds of miles
around, trucks are not likely to
pull off I-95 to fill up with lique-
fied natural gas anytime soon.
But Malone can use the fuel for
his own fleet while waiting for
broader demand to materialize.
Malone has changed nearly a
third of his fleet to trucks to use
liquefied natural gas for fuel.
He says he can support the fuel
station with just his own fleet,
which uses some 500,000 gal-
lons of diesel a year. But he is
looking for other commercial
customers who can convert
their fleets to use what he be-
lieves is the fuel of the future.
The 18 Kenworth rigs the
company recently purchased
have 119-gallon liquefied natu-
An Enviro truck passes by a liquefied natural gas fueling station at Enviro Express, a waste transporting company in Bridgeport.
ral gas tanks and much smaller
diesel fuel tanks The new rigs
use a small amount of diesel to
start and warm up the engine
before it switches to liquid gas.
The rigs go nearly 400 miles
before having to refuel.
“It’s the future. It really is,”
Malone said.
Liquefied natural gas is
cheaper than diesel
by 25 percent, and
with the price of
diesel expected to
climb in the next
six to eight
months, the price
difference is ex-
pected to be as much as 50 per-
cent, Grannis said. Though
trucks use the same amount of
fuel, liquefied natural gas is
lighter than diesel, allowing
trucks to carry more load.
Malone paid more for the liq-
uefied natural gas trucks —
$200,000 per truck compared to
$120,000 for the old diesel mod-
el. He trucks his own liquefied
natural gas from Pennsylvania.
The state has other liquefied
natural gas facilities, including
one in Waterbury, but those are
used by utility companies for
commercial use.
Liquefied natural gas is 80
PHOTOS BY STEVEN VALENTI REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN
percent cleaner than diesel, so
Malone said he is doing some-
thing good for the environment.
He believes that as emissions
restrictions on diesel trucks get
more stringent, fuels like lique-
fied natural gas will become
more popular.
Grannis said the technology
for liquefied natural gas fueling
stations is expensive. There is no
money in the Future Fuels Pro-
ject for another liquefied natural
gas station in the state. The fu-
ture of this type of fuel would de-
pend on people like Malone
willing to invest their own mon-
ey into converting their fleets
and investing money into lique-
fied natural gas fueling stations.
Malone imagines a day when
trucks from other fleets will
pull into his yard with key
cards to fuel up with liquefied
natural gas. In about four years
he would like to invest in a
chain of liquefied natural gas
stations covering the highway
from Washington, D.C., to
Boston where trucks could stop
every few hundred miles to re-
fuel on cheaper American-
made liquefied natural gas. He
imagines a chain of these sta-
tions across the country.
“A daisy chain from Califor-
nia to Maine,” he said.
battle over reform
Continued from Page One
Attorney General Ken Cuc-
cinelli, a conservative Repub-
lican who brought the case,
said after Hudson issued his
ruling. Hudson denied a re-
quest to throw out the man-
date while higher courts
consider the case.
Legal experts are divided
on whether the Supreme
Court is likely to void the law.
The justices, including the
court’s conservatives, have re-
peatedly said that elected law-
makers, not judges, should set
national policy. But the court’s
conservative majority has also
shown itself willing to set
aside precedent and strike
down laws in politically
charged cases.
The legal attack on the in-
surance mandate is a key ele-
ment of the conservative
strategy to derail Obama’s
health-care overhaul, which
depends on putting an esti-
mated 30 million more Ameri-
cans onto insurance rolls.
The much-anticipated deci-
sion by Hudson, an appointee of
President George W. Bush,
added new fuel to the gathering
Republican drive. Even in the
courts, the partisan nature of
the debate is apparent: Two oth-
er federal district judges, both
Democratic appointees, ruled
previously that the insurance
mandate was constitutional.
The target of the Virginia
lawsuit is the unprecedented
insurance mandate, which
will require most Americans
to get health insurance start-
ing in 2014 and penalize those
who do not.
The requirement would
spread risk more broadly and
control insurance premiums
for everyone, enabling the
federal government to prohib-
it insurers from denying cov-
erage to Americans with
pre-existing medical condi-
tions. Without a mandate,
Americans would be able to
buy insurance only when they
get sick, driving up premiums,
a phenomenon that has oc-
curred in several states that
TODAY’S POLL
VOTE AT WWW.REP-AM.COM
Should the Supreme Court
declare the national health
care law unconstitutional?
FIND RESULTS OF YESTERDAY’S
QUESTION ON PAGE 2A.
have guaranteed coverage
without any requirement.
Most defenders of the law
believe that eliminating the
mandate would undo the
health-care overhaul.
“Unfortunately, striking the
‘individual responsibility’ pro-
vision could also jeopardize the
most popular insurance reform
in the statute: preventing in-
surance companies from deny-
ing health coverage to people
with pre-existing health condi-
tions,” said Families USA ex-
ecutive director Ron Pollack.
“If we’re going to outlaw
discrimination based on pre-
existing conditions, the only
way to keep people from gam-
ing the system and raising
costs on everyone else is to en-
sure that everyone takes re-
sponsibility for their own
health insurance,” Stephanie
Cutter, assistant to the presi-
dent for special projects said
in blog post Monday.
Obama administration
lawyers argued in the Virginia
case that the mandate is per-
missible under Congress’ au-
thority to regulate commerce,
which gives the federal gov-
ernment broad powers to reg-
ulate economic activity.
But Hudson, backing con-
servative critics of the law,
concluded that the new law
oversteps this authority by re-
quiring Americans to obtain a
specific product.
“Neither the Supreme Court
nor any federal circuit court of
appeals has extended Com-
merce Clause power to compel
an individual to involuntarily
enter the stream of commerce
by purchasing a commodity in
the private market,” the judge
concluded.

TOWER: Legal status up in the airwaves
Continued from Page One
but the board would have to en-
dorse the plan before the facili-
ty could be installed.
Board members weren’t so
sure they were given any say.
“I think that we need some le-
gal advice,” Donovan said. “I
don’t know the legal process.
That’s what I’m concerned
about, because this is a contract
that’s been executed.”
Vice Chairwoman Barbara
Lewis said she did not under-
stand why the board was left
out of the decision. “If they in-
tended to have us there (in the
TAXES: House now expected to pass legislation
contract) then why weren’t we
part of the process?” Lewis said.
The communications facility,
which consists of a 42-inch
equipment cabinet and two an-
tennae, was debated at last
week’s Board of Education
meeting, where Mezzo said the
board did not have any legal say
because the borough owns all
school buildings.
That would hold true if not
for the contract provision that
requires school board approval
for this particular project.
The contract, good for five
years, would require Clearwa-
ter to pay the borough $1,750
per month.
Parents at Monday’s PTO
meeting voiced many of the
same concerns that came up at
the Board of Education meet-
ing, saying there was no conclu-
sive proof emissions from the
facility would not harm their
children.
“My main concern is, I want
all of you to fight as hard as you
can to make this a win-win situ-
ation,” said Michele Linton, 41,
of 6 Brittany Lane. “Get this
tower off of our school and put it
somewhere else.”
Clearwire missed an internal
funding deadline in November
and will now have to wait a year
to continue with plans to install
three facilities in the borough,
which means a change of plans
could still be negotiated, Mezzo
said.
The other two proposed loca-
tions are Town Hall and the
Eastside firehouse. The bor-
ough already has 10 cell phone
towers and six radio towers, in-
cluding one on the steeple of the
Immanuel Lutheran Church on
Coen Street.
Continue the debate online.
Comment on this story at our
website, www.rep-am.com.
Judge is the one who sent Vick away
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RICHMOND, Va. — The
federal judge who struck
down the very centerpiece of
the Obama administration’s
health care law Monday is a
George W. Bush appointee
who earned the nickname
“Hang ’Em High Henry” for
his tough-on-crime stand as a
prosecutor and on the bench.
Among those who have felt
U.S. District Judge Henry E.
Hudson’s wrath is NFL star
Michael Vick, who in 2007 re-
ceived a nearly two-year sen-
tence — and a dressing-down
— for a dogfighting ring.
Hudson rejected Vick’s plea
for leniency, questioned
whether the athlete was truly
remorseful and chastised him
for failing to apologize to chil-
dren who looked up to him.
“You were instrumental in
promoting, funding and facili-
tating this cruel and inhu-
mane sporting activity,” the
judge said, adding: “I’m not
convinced you’ve fully accept-
ed responsibility.”
He has maintained his no-
nonsense demeanor since be-
ing appointed. Last month, he
denied a former state finance
chief’s request to be allowed
to spend the holidays with his
family before being sentenced
early next year for fraud.
“Given the amount of dis-
honesty and deceit I’ve seen in
this case, I don’t trust you to
self-surrender,” Hudson told
John W. Forbes II before mar-
shals led him away.

Continued from Page One

The legislation would provide
a two-year reprieve in the tax
increases scheduled to take ef-
fect on Jan. 1 at all income lev-
els, reduce Social Security taxes
for every wage earner in 2011
and extend an expiring program
of jobless benefits for the long-
term unemployed.
It also includes a scaled back
estate tax that Republicans sup-
port and has become a source of
Democrats’ discontent. The
bill’s overall cost, estimated at
$858 billion over two years,
would be added to already huge
federal deficits.
The legislation presents a
postelection reach across party
lines after two years of gridlock.
Republicans wanted a perma-
nent extension of all the tax cuts
enacted when George W. Bush
was president, while Democrats
insisted rates be permitted to
rise on incomes over $200,000
for individuals and $250,000 for
couples.
Obama gave no indication he
was willing to accept further
changes to the plan he negotiat-
ed with senior Republicans.
“I understand those con-
cerns,” he said of objections
from some of his usual allies in
Congress. “I share some of
them. But that’s the nature of
compromise, sacrificing some-
thing that each of us cares about
to move forward on what mat-
ters to all of us.”
Both Sens. Joe Lieberman
spoke against it last Friday in
an eight-hour speech on the
class tax cuts will help create
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Atty. John C. Kucej
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Despite strong criticism from
rightfully theirs, so they can
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rich. Firing back, he said failure
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fellow Democrats, Obama has please,” said McConnell. gridlock at a time the economy
made passage of the bill a key In a jab at Democrats, he is still frail and unemployment
year-end priority, calling it es- added, “This is an important is at a persistently high rate of
sential for the economy as it
struggles to recover from the
shift, and the White House
should be applauded for agree-
9.8 percent.
The administration’s outgo-
of
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The Senate vote was never in Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., Lawrence Summers, said in a
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