Coal Ash

Why should you care about coal ash?

If clean water is important to you and your family, you need to know about a silent danger to our waterways and public health.* Coal ash, the waste left over after coal is burned to generate power, contains concentrated amounts of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium, and selenium, which are hazardous to human health, and to wildlife. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium, and a range of harmful heavy metals and toxic pollutants that poison the air and drinking water supplies of communities living near coal ash dumpsites. Coal ash threatens the respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological systems of people living near more than 1400 dump sites across the nation. Despite this danger, coal ash is subject to less stringent rules than everyday household garbage! Coal ash, mixed with water to form a toxic slurry, is stored in huge impoundments, commonly called “coal ash ponds” or “lagoons”, which often have no liners to prevent heavy metals from getting into drinking water.*

Alabama has nine coal-fired power plants with at least 44 coal ash ponds resting on rivers and creeks throughout the state. These plants produce 3.2 million tons of coal ash every year, and because of the high quantity of toxic heavy metals, Alabama houses the most toxic coal ash of any other state in the US. *

Coal ash disasters have been plaguing communities living near poisonous and dangerous dump sites – from the 2008 disaster in Tennessee, when a billion gallons of toxic sludge poured onto farmland and into the Emory and Clinch rivers, to the recent failure along North Carolina’s Dan River, when a burst stormwater pipe underneath an unlined coal ash pit dumped 140,000 tons of coal ash and toxic wastewater into the river – the problem with coal ash pollution is getting worse and more dangerous every day.

Over 1.5 million children live near coal ash storage sites and 70 percent of all coal ash lagoons disproportionately impact low-income communities. When coal ash comes in contact with water, a toxic soup of hazardous pollutants can leach out of the waste and poison our water. The EPA has found some coal ash ponds pose a 1 in 50 risk of cancer to residents drinking arsenic-contaminated water – a risk 2000 times higher than EPA’s regulatory goal. The vast majority of states do not require adequate monitoring or liners to stop the release of toxic chemicals, nor do they ensure that massive earthen dams are maintained safely. States have routinely failed to protect their citizens from coal ash – as was evident in North Carolina’s recent handling of the Dan River coal ash spill.

What is the Alabama Rivers Alliance doing about coal ash?

How can I learn more?

Watch this short film from Southern Exposure Film Fellowship program:

Download our brochure addressing coal ash issues in Alabama created by the Alabama Rivers Alliance and partners.

Sources:

“Alabama: A state’s role in coal ash regulation.” (2013). Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and partners. Retrieved from http://www.southeastcoalash.org/ “What you need to know about coal ash.” (2014). Retrieved from http://www.southeastcoalash.org/