Tell EPA to protect our water supplies from toxic coal ash and mountaintop removal mining
- Rob Perks
- Director, Center for Advocacy Campaigns, Washington, D.C.
- Blog | About
- Posted September 28, 2009 in Curbing Pollution , Solving Global Warming
The Environmental Protection Agency is grappling with two critical issues regarding how to protect America's water supplies from dirty coal: permitting mountaintop removal coal mining and regulating toxic coal ash.
Mountaintop removal coal mining continues to ravage Appalachia's communities and environment. Coal mining corporations are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract coal from the seams below. They have already obliterated more than 500 peaks and ridges -- encompassing more than a million acres -- buried more than a thousand miles of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities and caused widespread contamination to the region's water.
Although the EPA recently blocked all 79 of the mountaintop mining permits submitted by mining companies to the federal government for approval, the decision is a temporary one, and could be reversed under pressure from coal mining companies and their congressional allies. Moreover, the gains recently made against mountaintop removal mining could be offset by the release of toxic coal ash wastes into water supplies.
Coal power plants in the United States produce more than 130 million tons of toxic coal combustion waste -- or coal ash -- every year. Weak state regulations allow the power industry to dump this waste in improperly constructed landfills, unlined ponds and even porous old mines, where toxics leach out and pollute water supplies. Although coal ash contains dangerous pollutants such as arsenic, lead and mercury, no federally enforceable national regulations exist to guarantee its safe management and disposal. Certain types of ash disposal sites pose a cancer risk nearly 1,000 times the government's acceptable level, along with irreversible risks to aquatic life, birds and wildlife.
The EPA is now evaluating whether and how to regulate coal ash, as well as how to proceed with the 79 mountaintop removal mining permits on hold.
Here's what you can do: Send a message urging the EPA to finalize its decision to reject the 79 pending mountaintop removal mining permits, and to regulate toxic coal ash as a hazardous waste.
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Comments
George — Oct 1 2009 09:37 AM
Mountain top mining is simply awful, and should be banned. Waste coal and rubble from such mining also needs to be stopped from filling the valleys and rivers.
Fly ash from burning coal has nothing to do with turning whole swaths of the country into a moonscape from mountain top mining and the two issues should not be on the same page.
Coal ash is not a hazardous material. The irresponsible, coal companies and utilities have had free reign for far too long, but to now go to the other extreme is counter intuitive. Federal regs are needed for the handling and disposal of coal ash, but to brand a geological formation in dust form as hazardous waste is idiotic. Coal ash can be landfilled and monitored 100% safely. It can also be beneficially reused/recycled in concrete, cement, gypsum, brick, concrete block with complete success and surpasses all safety standards on toxicity with flying colors.
Fly ash, when sintered and turned to a solid rock can actually be used as a water filtration system, kinda like a Britta filter in your fridge.
Fly ash can be detrimental to the environment when it is in a powder form and is dumped in a sludge pond, or in a poorly constructed unlined landfill, an empty mine or if it is allowed to cause a dust storm.
Coal mining, coal burning and ash disposable and reuse should be much more costly to allow other form of energy to compete. To brand fly ash as hazardous and to obnoxiously call it: "toxic coal combustion waste -- or coal ash --," in the same sentence as you do above, is neither cute nor clever, it is immature, passive aggressive, and simply ill informed.
Best Regards,
George