While the Obama White House continues to sit on a proposal to reform handling and disposal of toxic ash from coal-fired power plants, a new report out this morning from the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice details new information revealing 31 other sites around the country where coal-ash pollution has contaminated groundwater, wetlands, rivers and streams.
There’s a press release online and the entire report, Out of Control: Mounting Damages from Coal Ash Waste Sites, is also available.
The sites identified in the report bring the number of cases of water contaminated to more than 100 around the nation, when you add in the 70 that have been previously cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (See this EPA report and this follow-up Federal Register notice).
Among the report’s highlights:
– Arsenic, a potent human carcinogen, has been found at 19 of 31 sits at extremely high levels, with one site found at nearly 150 times the federal water standard.
– At least 26 of these 31 sites report contamination that exceeds one or more primary drinking water standards.
– Twenty five out of the 31 sites are still active disposal sites.
– The damage is not limited to “wet” ash ponds like the TVA Kingston Plant site that collapsed in December 2008, re-igniting interest in the coal-ash issue. At least 13 of the contaminated sites are so-called “dry” disposal, including two “structural fills” that were advertised as “beneficial use” of coal ash.
Jeff Stant, director of the Environmental Integrity Project’s Coal Combustion Waste Initiative, said:
The data are overwhelming, and these 31 sites sound a clear warning that the EPA must heed before much more damage is done.
Among those new 31 sites were two in West Virginia: American Electric Power’s Little Scary Creek Fly Ash Impoundment in Putnam County (see photo above) and an impoundment at AEP’s Mitchell Power Plant new Moundsville.
According to the report, these sites:
… Discharge large quantities of selenium into Little Scary Creek and Conner Run, respectively, and the state has identified both as “fly ash influenced streams.”
Selenium levels in each stream were more than 6 times the level the EPA has determined is safe for aquatic life. Toxic selenium in fish taken from Conner Run averaged 3 times the fish tissue limit the EPA has proposed, while selenium concentrations in fish from Little Scary Creek exceeded the proposed limit by a factor of 7. Fish from both streams exceeded the West Virginia advisory for fish consumption.
Lisa Evans, senior administrative counsel for Earthjustice, said:
The data are overwhelming: These unregulated sites present a clear and present danger to public health and the environment. If law and science are to guide our most important environmental decisions, as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has promised, we need to regulate these hazards before they get much worse.
Subscribe to the Coal Tattoo
So I’m down at the local Lowes to buy topsoil for my tree plantings and gardens. For the garden, where I grow fruits and veggies to eat, I look for the high end organic stuff cuz lets face it I’m worth it. However, I looked at what the cheap topsoil (about a dollar per cubic yard) had in it. Yep you guessed it…fly ash from coal fired power plants. Plain as day right on the label. It scares me enough that most people don’t read labels (like my neighbor for instance who was going to use it as a base for the community garden) and just go with the cheap topsoil. I suppose this is fine if you’re growing shrubs or sod but aren’t we still polluting the underlying soil with this crud? I know fly ash is an overly abundant material that is used in all sorts of industrial uses like concrete etc. But soil?? Really? I know this is little off topic but it was my latest experience with coal fly ash…aside from the guy in the cube next to me who is still dealing with the Kingston Ash spill from December 2008.
When I was a little boy living in rural southern West Virginia my family lived with my Grandmother. She used coal for heat. Everyday one of my chores was to empty the ashes out of the stove. Grandma would always telling me to dump them in the garden that would be good for the crops. Then every year we would plow that garden and I don’t know if it was my grandmother’s green thumb or the coal ash but she always had beautiful, plentiful crops. We always ate good throught out the year from this garden. Then did it again the next year. My grandmother did this till she died and my 70 yr old uncle is still doing it. I’m almost 52 yr old and currently in good health and my grandmother lived just shy of her 93rd birthday. Not passing judgement just stating the facts.
An additional note on the photograph — the Little Scary Creek impoundment is associated with the John Amos Power Station, which is also shown, on the banks of the Kanawha River. John Amos is the western end of the troubled PATH power line that AEP and Allegheny Energy are proposing to build. Everything is connected.
RB there is a big difference in the volume of ash. it would be interesting for someone to look at the metals concentration in family ash dumps just to provide some context for this sort of observation. there is a lot of coal slag in the old timey landfill out behind my house. i don’t plant my garden there
a Cherokee friend of mine grows absolutely humongous heirloom tomatoes in the soil above his septic drain field. I don’t recommend growing tomatoes at the sewage treatment plant.
There’s always an abundance of anecdotal (story) evidence that would seem to refute science: harsh winter during climate change, healthy kids at Marsh Fork Elementary, etc. My mom said all this talk that pregnant mothers shouldn’t smoke or drink was a “bunch of hooey” because she had healthy kids.
[...] Following up on the new Earthjustice-Environmental Integrity Project report on coal ash pollution, The New Mexico Independent had this piece about a local disposal [...]
John Amos Power Plant can create more jobs that we desperately need in this state by being creative enough to make cement, stepping stones, statues, building block, rock benches for reclaimed land sites for tourism, etc. etc. etc. from the coal ash. This way it isn’t transported to another site to poison. Something needs to be done with it. They already do this in Germany. They make building block with it. There has to be a way to make it into a form that is no longer toxic. There has to be a way to make it into something useful. If everyone will put forth the effort to imagine a way to transform problems into solutions, we can spend less time in argument and more time creating jobs.