Their wine is pretty good, but their air is all tirey!

There are a lot of things that people love about Erie. I for one enjoy going wine tasting (Mazza is fantastic), buying a few bottles and going on a drunken rampage on the lake. Which is actually a pretty sweet lake, by the way. They even are on the short list for the coveted "All-America Cities" status, an award granted to municipalities that have made an industrial, economic or environmental turnaround.

But there are still a lot of things that are really, really shitty about Erie, PA.

For instance, it snows. Not like your typical Pittsburgh Public School snow day, either. I'm talking Fargo snow.

Another thing is, Erie Renewable Energy wants to burn tires to produce electricity.

ERE will employ circulating fluidized bed ("CFB") technology to convert Tire-Derived Fuel ("TDF") into a combustible compound that can be fired in a boiler to produce steam that will power a steam turbine and produce the stipulated energy.

See, the concept here is okay. Take a waste product and find a way to turn it into electricity. That way you empty the landfills while cashing in on a "green" initiative. Here's the issue: you're burning "tire-derived fuel." That is a nice euphemism for liquidized rubber, and the artificial additives included to make tires. And that pisses Mother Earth off big time.

So what can you do about it? First, get really pissed off. Then, go here and read up on some stuff, then go to the protest they are having at the potential plant site (info on the aforementioned web on Friday, May 1 at 4:10 PM, at the Former International Paper Site, near East Lake Road and Downing Avenue. 814-490-9599 for more details. And check the KEEP (Keep Erie's Environment Protected) website for other stuff going on too.