How large do numbers have to be before they mean something to us?           

Meet 1,232,659.

He’s the amount of pollution released in just one Kansas county in 2006, according to the latest EPA report. Because of him, this county ranks in the worst 20 percent of the dirtiest counties in the United States.

That county is Douglas, once thought to be the environmentally friendly, progressive speck of blue in a sea of Kansas red. But no matter the political color, the county is dirtier, mostly because of emissions released by the coal-fired power plant just north of Lawrence.

So far Lawrence has ignored 1,232,659. He’s public information that’s long been crippled by poor accessibility and outdated EPA reports.

That’s where Scorecard.org comes to the rescue. This Web site, created by the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonpartisan environmental advocacy group, compiles pollution data from various EPA reports and distills it down into easier, bite-size nuggets of numbers. Scorecard breaks down the pollution data into how it’s released: to the land, air and water. In each of those sections, the site gives the chemical names and amounts released by each reporting facility.

Amid shrinking support from the City Commission, the administrator of the public transit system in Lawrence is leaving to run a much larger transit system in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Cliff Galante, public transit administrator for the City of Lawrence, has resigned his post, taking a position with Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada where he will manage the fixed-route bus operations for the City of Las Vegas and surrounding communities.

Galante joined the City of Lawrence in July of 2005. He has overseen the growth of ridership, feasibility study of a merger with KU, assisted the launch of the KU Park and Ride, launched Carpool Connection and worked to secure federal and state funding for the system.