The terminal is urgently needed, Dow says, to meet growing demand for its products in Japan. The new facility would make it possible for Dow to increase its exports to Japan to about $300 million per year from a current $100 million, the company says. In the case of caustic soda alone, yearly exports could rise to $80 mil lion from the present $10 million. Some years back, Dow wanted to build its own big chlor-alkali plant in Japan. It finally got government ap proval after lengthy delays and de spite opposition from local producers (C&EN, May 10, 1976, page 6). But Dow later abandoned the project, partly because of rapidly increasing electricity costs in Japan. Now, sev eral Japanese chlor-alkali producers are expected to quit production rather than bear the expense of con verting from mercury cells to dia phragm cells, which they would have to do by no later than 1984. So Dow likely will have little trouble finding a market for the additional caustic soda. Dow already owns 50% of AsahiDow, a Japanese plastics operation with sales of about $700 million last year. In addition, Dow currently is building a wholly owned polyols plant at Kinu-Uri, Japan, slated for com pletion next year, at a cost of about $40 million. D
Supreme Court upholds EPA clean water ruling The Environmental Protection Agency won a victory in the Supreme Court last week, and the decision, al though it involved a somewhat lim ited issue, could help EPA in future court cases. The court ruled that the agency is not required by the Clean Water Act to consider a facility's economic capability when granting variances, or exemptions, from its best practicable technology control regulations. The case was brought before the high court by EPA because two U.S. appeals courts recently made con flicting rulings on the issue. The Fourth Court of Appeals, in a decision for the National Crushed Stone As sociation and others, decided EPA must grant variances if a plant cannot meet the best practicable technology rules economically. On the other hand, just a few months earlier, the District of Columbia Appeals Court issued an opposite ruling. The industries involved main tained that the law requires EPA to grant a company a variance from complying with the limitations if the cost of meeting these is so great the 8
C&EN Dec. 8, 1980
company might have to close. The court, however, in a unanimous deci sion, says that the granting of vari ances for economic reasons applies only to the next step in the water cleanup process, the use of best available technology control, which is not to be implemented until 1987. Congress set up a system designed to ensure that some minimum water standards would have to be complied with by all companies. This is the "best practicable technology" stan dard. An EPA spokesman says that the agency did indeed consider costs when setting these standards, but they apply to an entire industry. A plant can get a variance from these controls if it can prove that its costs for compliance are much higher than those calculated for the industry, but it cannot get that variance simply because its own financial status is such that it cannot comply. The Supreme Court decision says that Congress considered this prob lem and concluded that, in some cases, plants would have to be closed if they could not comply with the limitations. Congress believed that permitting a variance based on max imum technology affordable by a single plant would undercut the pur pose of the Clean Water Act. So, although the victory is good for EPA, the ramifications probably would have been greater if EPA had lost, according to assistant general counsel Richard G. Stroll Jr. What the court has done, he says, is to re state that EPA's interpretations of government statutes must be given great weight by the courts; that is, that EPA's view is probably the in tent of Congress. If EPA had lost, it would have opened a new avenue for firms to challenge the agency's rul ings. D
W. Albert Noyes dead at 82 W. Albert Noyes Jr., noted photochemist and long active in ACS ac tivities, died Nov. 25 in an Austin, Tex., hospital after a long illness. He was 82. Noyes was Ashbel Smith Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the Uni versity of Texas, Austin, where he had been working part-time since his re tirement from the University of Rochester in 1963. A member of ACS for more than 60 years, he was presi dent of the society in 1947. His academic career began as teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, after graduating from Grinnell College (A.B. degree, 1919) and studying further at the
W. Albert Noyes
University of Paris (Doctor of Science degree, 1920) and the University of Geneva. He later taught at the Uni versity of Chicago, Brown University, and the University of Rochester, where he remained for 25 years. At Rochester, he served as chemistry department chairman, graduate school dean, and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. A second career included three important editorships: Chemical Reviews, 1939-49, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 195062, and Journal of Physical Chemis try, 1952-64. Noyes is renowned not only as an educator and research scientist but as a scientist-statesman, a reputation gained from his many national and international activities. During World War II, he was division chairman of the National Defense Research Committee, organizing and directing research teams at prominent univer sities. He also served on the staff of the Chemical Warfare Service. Be sides traveling abroad frequently in these posts, he later was vice presi dent of the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry, 1947-51, and president, 1959-63. As adviser to the U.S. Delegation of the First Con ference of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organization) in 1946, he took part in the original drafting of plans for that organization, and served for six years as a member of the U.S. commission for UNESCO. Noyes received honorary degrees from seven universities in the U.S., France, and Canada. Among his many other honors have been the Priestley Medal (1954), the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award (1970), the Medal of Merit of the U.S. Government (1948), and the King's Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom, a British award (1948). He was a long-time member of the National Academy of Sciences. Π
