It was the nightmare before Christmas: A massive spill at a power plant near Knoxville dumped more than a billion tons of toxic coal ash and buried more than 400 acres of homes and farmland in thick gray sludge. The incident ranks as the largest coal ash disaster in American history. But it wasn't the first, and it wouldn't be the last, as an early-January spill in Alabama made clear. As NRDC experts explain, the storage problems associated with coal waste represent just one more reason to dump this dirty fuel for the cleaner alternatives.
The horror is unimaginable. A community suffering severe health effects, with more than a thousand residents blaming coal ash contamination for causing their sickness, including grisly birth defects in their children. This, according to a recent investigative story in the Miami Herald. Go to the article to see a...continued→
Without a doubt coal is dirty and dangerous. Consider that the nation's power plants spew out 130 million tons of coal combustion waste every year. Much of this so-called coal ash, which is what's left at the bottom of the smokestacks after coal gets burned...continued→
Are you drinking water contaminated by coal pollution? Apparently, that's what folks living in the shadows of the South Carolina Electric & Gas coal plant fear. A chilling story published in the Charleston Post & Courier tells how local residents "have wondered for years about...continued→
Kudos to Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) for bird-dogging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the need to regulate pollution from coal-fired power plants. Yesterday, Rep. Markey sent a letter to EPA requesting information on the agency's findings related to the...continued→
On the heels of last month's jaw-dropping New York Times expose of widespread water pollution in the U.S., the newspaper just published this follow-up story focusing on one of the culprits: pollution from coal-fired power plants. The NYT story highlights...continued→
Last night "60 Minutes" aired an in-depth story on the problems with coal ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal at power plants. Leslie Stahl focused on last year's nightmare before Christmas, when an impoundment pond containing 50-year's worth of coal ash...continued→
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...continued→
Will wonders never cease. ACCCE, quickly becoming the Inspector Clouseau of the advocacy world for its misteps and outright stumbles, has discovered a new factoid that it thinks really makes the case for coal. In a blog post and email sent...continued→
Information obtained from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reveals the existence of nearly twice as many toxic coal ash dumps across the country as the agency previously indicated to the public. The results of NRDC's recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request -- filed jointly with Sierra...continued→
Since late December last year, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the nation's largest public utility, has been spending about a million bucks a day cleaning up more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge that spilled out of a holding pond...continued→
A lawsuit links Dominion Power to hiding coal ash pollution. And when I say links, I mean that literally. Seriously, what is it with coal companies and golf courses? I mean you can't throw a piece of blasted rubble in...continued→
A few weeks after the December disaster in Tennessee, in which a ruptured waste "containment pond" at a TVA power plant spilled over a billion gallons of liquefied coal ash into the Emory River and over 300 acres of the surrounding community, I blogged about the health...continued→
So far, the Tennessee Valley Authority has spent $168 million toward the cleanup of its massive coal ash spill in Tennessee last December. That includes $65 million in settlements with Roane County residents who suffered property damage, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. The nation's...continued→
I guess you could say I'm in a Tennessee state of mind these days. Lately, I've been blogging the zany boycott launched against the Volunteer State by angry mountaintop miners who demand the right to blow up Tennessee's beloved mountains, which...continued→
A scathing independent report concludes that the massive coal ash spill which devastated a Tennessee town was no accident -- it was negligence. And other waste storage facilities managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) could be ticking time bombs. Recall that in the dead of night last December...continued→
I've been traveling and so am just catching up on what's happening in the world of coal ash pollution. It just so happens that the issue remains on the front-burner, as evidenced by a few recent news stories. First, the latest...continued→
Sarah Palin's Washington Post editorial slamming cap-and-trade gets bashed on Switchboard (here and here), Grist, Climate Progress, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair. "Carbon footprint" and "locavore" added to Merriam-Webster's dictionary. Fast Company calls for a universal standard for measuring...continued→
I'm scratching my head (and shaking my fist) over this nugget of information: "The Tennessee site of one of the nation's worst coal ash spills failed to make a federal list of ash storage ponds posing the highest potential threat...continued→
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, accompanied by anti-pollution advocate Erin Brockovich, recently investigated the Tennessee coal ash spill -- the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Read the companion CNN story and watch the segment here: Last week NRDC and our allies...continued→
After pressure by NRDC and others, today the Environmental Protection Agency just released the list of 44 "high hazard" coal ash disposal sites around the nation. At the behest of the Department of Homeland Security, the EPA had initially refused to reveal the...continued→
As reported today in Grist, there are nearly four dozen coal ash waste disposal sites in the U.S. that are so hazardous that were they to fail, "they could kill untold numbers of nearby residents." Coal ash sites -- which are less regulated than...continued→
One man's trash is another man's treasure, they say. Well, it appears that Tennessee's toxic coal sludge is headed out of state. [UPDATE: The latest issue of GQ magazine covers the coal ash spill.] The Tennessee Valley Authority is shipping some of...continued→
The Waxman-Markey bill on investing in clean energy and reducing global warming pollution nears consideration. Get updates from NRDC's bloggers here. College students demand higher tuition to help pay for green projects. The first clean-up effort of the Great Pacific Garbage...continued→
A Tennessee town's sad saga may take a turn for the better now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has decided to take control over the cleanup of the worst coal pollution disaster in U.S. history. Last December, a waste...continued→
Several of my colleagues have been blogging about coal ash -- waste from coal-fired power plants that is contaminated with toxic metals. More than two-thirds of this waste is dumped into landfills, storage ponds or old mines or otherwise stored...continued→
A USA Today article reporting that SC Johnson will remove phthalates from products and label all ingredients in response to consumer concerns borrows heavily from Frances Beinecke's blog post on the topic, quoting Frances several times... NRDC's list of "filthy...continued→
Today NRDC is publishing new data on the contaminated coal waste that more than eighty proposed coal-fired power plants would create if built. We are also publishing data on waste from existing coal plants, including our estimates of the toxic...continued→
**Update** The Associated Press is reporting today that most of the slurry spill from the New Page plant hit the riverbank on the West Virginia side of the river, rather than entering the river directly. Bullet dodged? Perhaps, until the next really...continued→
I've traveled all over this great land but I've never been to Indiana. Perhaps that's just as well. An illuminating and alarming news report details all the ways in which Indiana is flirting with a coal catastrophe. Consider this: Indiana's...continued→
Since the day the waste storage pond broke at the TVA power plant in Tennessee, deluging downstream communities with toxic coal ash sludge, NRDC has been following the issue, assisting our local partners and pushing federal officials to respond. To...continued→
In the Los Angeles Times David Pettit explains how the suit against AQMD may impact pollution regulation... The New York Times automotive blog cites NRDC as a group participating in talks on regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from cars and trucks... On...continued→
President Obama kicked off the week by telling the EPA to reconsider a request by California to impose stricter limits on tailpipe emissions. In other news: Exposure to the coal ash spill in Tennessee could lead to serious health problems....continued→
A few days after the devastating TVA coal ash spill in Tennessee, NRDC received an urgent call for help from our local allies at United Mountain Defense. At UMD's behest, we alerted our contacts at Duke University and urged them to conduct on-site, independent testing...continued→
I wonder if the PR flacks at the Tennessee Valley Authority have ever read the classic book, Toxic Sludge is Good for You. That thought occurred to me after reading how the TVA tweaked and twisted its talking points on the massive coal ash spill last...continued→
It just goes to show you that even $10-20 million worth of advertising won't buy you love. --> The "clean coal" myth was swamped this December and January by the coal ash spills in Tennessee and Alabama. Here are just...continued→
Turns out that this public agency -- the Tennessee Valley Authority -- is not at all interested in hearing from the public. Yesterday morning, NRDC issued an action alert on our website urging people to ask TVA to cover the costs...continued→
The Washington Post reports today on the sudden emergence of coal ash waste treatment as a high-priority issue in the wake of last month's devastating storage pond break at TVA's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee. The disaster has sparked national attention, prompting state and federal regulators and...continued→
In the wake of the worst coal ash spill in U.S. history government, officials are waking up to the shocking fact that this toxic waste is not federally regulated as hazardous. And with a patchwork of inconsistent and woefully insufficient standards dealing...continued→
My colleague John Walke passed along what he dubbed "stunning, positive" news. A federal judge today ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority must reduce emissions at four of its coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama because their windblown air pollution...continued→
The flurry of first-hand reports are still coming in on the massive TVA ash spill in eastern Tennessee last month. Legal activist Erin Brockovich weighed in today on her visit to the disaster site with a moving depiction of the dangers...continued→
Since the first coal-fired power plant ash pollution spill in Tennessee right before Christmas and continuing through the second coal ash spill last Friday in Alabama, a huge amount of media and lawmaker attention has been devoted to the latest...continued→
That massive spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant, which flooded over 400 acres with 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge, has local residents coping not just with disrupted lives and damaged property but also with concerns about...continued→
On the heels of another coal ash spill this morning at a TVA plant in Alabama comes word of a second waste pond rupture in East Tennessee about 60 miles from the Kingston disaster. The Tennessean is reporting that state environmental officials...continued→
The outgoing Bush administration won't implement fuel efficiency rules. Dynegy cancels six planned coal power plants; stock rises after announcement. Bush to designate 200,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean as a protected area (NRDC's Sarah Chasis explains what's...continued→
[Photo of TN spill courtesy of Chris Irwin, United Mountain Defense] Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama. These are the states where the most coal ash waste is stored in ponds, like the one in Tennessee at that TVA power plant that recently blew out and buried downstream...continued→
Americans have been assaulted on the airwaves with ads about so-called "clean coal." What happened in East Tennessee, where a breach of a coal ash pond at a power plant send a billion gallons of toxic sludge into nearby communities,...continued→
I just returned from a Congressional hearing convened by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to address the big coal ash spill last month in Tennessee. As tee'd up by Ben Jervey on NRDC's Greenlight blog, this hearing follows a damning New...continued→
Imagine an Olympic size swimming pool brimming with highly toxic waste. Now imagine over 1,600 such sludge-filled pools -- or about a billion gallons. That's how much liquified coal waste -- "fly ash" -- broke through an earthen dike at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant...continued→
It is always a headache for corporate pr flacks when reality intrudes and negates months of planning and millions in spending trying to persuade the public of something that just isn't so. So the flacks at coal front-group ACCCE (pronounce...continued→
How to generate millions of jobs, break our dependence on oil and reduce the pollution that causes global warming.
