Breaking news out of Alabama about an amazing new technological discovery:

Some of Alabama’s nastiest coal-fired power plants may be cleaning up their act with some new technology called a "scrubber" that was unveiled by Alabama Power Company executives Wednesday.

The mechanism, expected to be operational in 2008, is designed to strip some of the worst pollution out of power plant emissions.

Dangerous sulfur dioxide, called SO2, is stripped from the plant's emissions through a scrubbing process that works like a shower. Pollution is mixed with limestone powder and water, which strips gases out of the plant's emissions before they're released into the air.

Wow, I wonder if TVA has heard about this new "scrubber" technology?

Wait a second. This sounds familiar. Oh, yeah, now I remember:

Most modern power plants — and all plants built after 1978 — are required to have special devices installed that clean the sulfur from the coal's combustion gases before the gases go up the smokestack. The technical name for these devices is "flue gas desulfurization units," but most people just call them "scrubbers" — because they "scrub" the sulfur out of the smoke released by coal-burning boilers. [..]

In most scrubbers, limestone (or another similar material called lime) is mixed with water and sprayed into the coal combustion gases (called "flue gases"). The limestone captures the sulfur and "pulls" it out of the gases.

Maybe the mule train hauling the mail got waylaid by bandits and the news about this technology has just now reached Alabama.

But seriously, it's hard to say which is worse -- Alabama Power Company executives trying to suggest this is "new technology" when in fact they should have installed it 30 years ago, or a "senior TV news reporter" who just transcribes what they say without bothering to check it out.