The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released information showing there are 584 coal ash dump sites across the country—almost twice as many as previously identified. The facilities are located in 35 states and concentrated in Appalachia, the Southeast, Midwest and Intermountain West.
The release [PDF] came late last Friday in response to a Freedom of
Information Act request. The information released reveals ownership,
location, hazard potential, year commissioned, type and quantity of
coal combustion waste disposed, dates of the last regulatory or company
assessment and in some instances whether an unregulated discharge of
ash has occurred.
However,
some critical data is missing because companies are claiming it’s
confidential business information. Duke Energy, Progress Energy and the
Southern Co.‘s Alabama Power and Georgia Power are among the
corporations withholding information on 74 coal ash dump sites,
including some of the country’s largest ash dumps.
“Some
utilities—notably Duke and Southern Companies—are hiding the
ball, withholding data on their ash ponds that their competitors have
already provided to EPA,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of
the Environmental Integrity Project, which submitted the FOIA request along with the environmental law firm Earthjustice and the Sierra Club.
“Let’s hope that EPA’s enforcement program puts a stop to these bogus
claims of ‘confidentiality,’ and compels the disclosure of data that
companies are required to report.”
States with coal ash sites included in the list are as follows: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Wyoming.
In
March, the EPA sent letters [PDF] to hundreds of power generating facilities
requesting information about coal ash surface impoundments.
The agency was responding to the disaster that occurred last December
at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern
Tennessee, where a dam failure released over 1 billion gallons of toxic
coal ash sludge into a nearby community and river.
Coal ash
sites contain harmful levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and other
toxins, which can leach out and contaminate drinking water sources.
The
EPA data shows that most of of the dump sites are over three decades
old, raising questions about the structural integrity of the dams and
the adequacy of the liners to prevent harmful chemicals from migrating
into water sources. It also shows regulatory inspections of the dams by
state and federal agencies are infrequent or nonexistent.
In
addition, EPA’s data reveal that many of the wet dumps are very large,
with over 100 exceeding 50 acres and numerous sites covering several
hundred acres. Furthermore the largest dumps tend to be the older sites
with the least amount of protection.
In response to another information request by the same three environmental groups, EPA recently identified 49 “high hazard” coal ash dump sites,
where a failure would be likely to cause loss of life. The Department
of Homeland Security had initially determined that the sites presented
such a threat to nearby communities that revealing their location would present a national security risk.
EPA
Administrator Lisa Jackson says her agency expects to release a
proposed federal rule governing disposal and storage of coal ash by
year’s end. Regulation is currently left up to an uneven patchwork of
state laws.
(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)
Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site?
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megaloptera Posted 1:37 pm
05 Sep 2009
GRASSROOTS GROUP TOURS TO DEFEAT CLIMATE BILL * Climate SOS Tours to "Kill The Bill" and push tougher laws * "Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough"
Climate SOS, a grassroots network of environmentalists, scientists, and social justice activists, is launching a nationwide car-free tour to defeat the climate bill now being considered in the Senate and to demand that any new legislation be grounded in science instead of politics.
The Climate SOS Heartland Tour will feature meetings with senate staffers in North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas, and Ohio. Climate SOS team members Duff Badgley of Seattle, Dr. Bill Sammons of Massachusetts, and Susan Laing, a photojournalist are traveling by bus and train, and will touch down in Bismarck on September 8, in Indianapolis (September 10-11), Little Rock (September 14-15), and Cleveland (September 17-18).
The team’s message? "Kill the Bill - Worse Than Nothing is Not Good Enough!"
Climate scientist Dr. James Hansen has personally endorsed the Climate SOS campaign. According to Hansen, if the senate climate bill is based upon the house-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA), it will be "worse for the environment than doing nothing." Climate SOS maintains that cap-and-trade will be ineffective in forestalling climate change, and supports EPA authority over carbon dioxide emissions.
Climate SOS opposes the use of carbon offsets and believes that polluting coal plants should be phased out quickly. Climate SOS asserts that incineration technologies must not be categorized as “renewable” and targets loopholes in the bill that allow unlimited carbon dioxide emissions from biomass and trash burners. Climate SOS holds that social justice concerns must be central to any climate legislation, and maintains that the federal climate bill currently under consideration would:
-Prevent the U.S. from making its fair share of greenhouse gas reductions
necessary to forge an effective global strategy on climate stabilization and to avert catastrophic climate change.
-Lock the United States into a complex cap-and-trade scheme that benefits fossil fuel utilities, Wall Street, and agribusiness. Cap and trade will be prone to Enron-style market manipulations, while doing nothing to save the climate.
- Use public money to subsidize the most polluting industries, drawing much needed financing away from real climate solutions.
- Add more polluting smokestacks, especially in backyards of the poor, people of color, and indigenous communities across the U.S., by grandfathering dirty old coal plants, permitting numerous new ones, and subsidizing incinerators as a form of renewable energy
- Trigger rainforest destruction in Africa, the Amazon, and Southeast Asia through its failure to incorporate indirect land use change provisions in the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) for biofuels.
Climate SOS - http://www.ClimateSOS.org No dirty climate bill, no false solutions! email : (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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