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New Study Shows Wide Scale Impacts of Coal Ash |
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Written by Sierra Club
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Wednesday, 28 October 2009 |
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)released a report today detailing the impacts of coal ash and smokestack scrubber sludge, toxic byproducts of burning coal, on water quality across the country.
The report shows that coal power plants are discharging huge amounts of toxic pollution including arsenic, mercury, and selenium into rivers, streams, and groundwater across the country, contaminating wells, killing wildlife, and risking lives.
EPA’s report concludes that an “increasing amount of evidence indicates that the characteristics of coal combustion wastewater have the potential to impact human health and the environment.” The report documents decades of damage, ranging from a single spill which wiped out 200,000 fish to reports of well water laced with selenium, which can cause infertility.
The report comes after data collected earlier this year by the EPA found that problems with coal ash, including aging dams, inadequately lined ponds and lax safety enforcements, were much more widespread than previously thought. That data was released after the Sierra Club and others submitted a Freedom of Information Act request.
In response Mary Anne Hitt, Deputy Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign issued the following statement.
"We applaud the EPA for addressing coal’s toxic legacy head on, for delving deeper and completing this long overdue investigation. We strongly encourage EPA to continue on this path, to take the next step toward safeguarding communities and drinking water by putting strong federal protections in place for coal ash and scrubber sludge disposal.
"We have long known that coal ash poses serious threats to our drinking water—that it can leach toxins like arsenic and lead into groundwater or as we saw last year in Tennessee flood into nearby communities and rivers. We know that the cancer risk of people living coal ash sites can be as high as 1 in 50. And we know that scrubber sludge filled with heavy metals too often is dumped into rivers without any real treatment.
"What we haven’t been able to do is document the full extent of the problem. For too long the water quality risks of coal plant waste have been ignored, by both the state and federal governments, while communities suffered. Implementing strong federal protections now is an essential step, not only to prevent future disasters, but to reduce existing risks." |
