Curbing air pollution from coal plants can lead to more ash in landfills

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Move Your Bloomin' Ash

The growing pressure to clean up emissions from coal-fired power plants is good for air quality, but it's got a sooty lining: pollution capture could end up filling landfills with millions more tons of toxic ash. More than one-third of the ash currently generated by coal plants is recycled for other uses, but the chemicals commonly used to capture pollutants out of coal-plant emissions change the composition of ash, often making it unusable. To the landfill it goes; the U.S. EPA does not classify coal ash as hazardous waste, even though it naturally contains arsenic and mercury, which can seep into groundwater. Equipment to remove pollutants without making ash unusable is available but can be up to four times more expensive for coal plants, and your health is totally not worth that much.

straight to the source: Forbes, Associated Press, Anna Jo Bratton, 26 Aug 2007

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Comments: (3 comments)

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Coal Sucks

We are a society addicted to a lot of things but the worst is warmth. It has been studied and verified that sweaters make you warmer, but despite this fact we instead burn coal. I am currently reading Paul Hawken's brilliant new book Blessed Unrest and in it he talks about how the Yamana of Patagonia were naked except for smearing seal blubber all over their bodies to keep warm. I mean don't go out and kill a seal, but demand sweaters!

What if the power companies gave you energy credits for wearing insulative clothing indoors rather than heating? Sweaters could be a tax right off as well. We could dress our hot models in sweaters during the winter time to build suspense for the new spring line of naked girls covered in tiny clothing shards.

If coal ash could be transformed into sweaters by some company I'ld bet the coal company would opt to start paying to clean it up because they know the sweater trend means their eventual defeat!

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

by wildleaf at 10:53 AM on 28 Aug 2007

does coal always suck

I live in American Falls Idaho, They are currently bringing in a coal gasification plant. They plan to make deisel and fertilizer and CO2. They clame it will benift our community. They have bought up the water rights here to the tune of a million gallons a day for cooling and what ever goes into their process. My question is do you know anything about it? And what should I be looking for as far as questions to ask them?

by jbd walms at 12:01 PM on 28 Aug 2007

Yes, coal always sucks.

Coal gasification isn't something you want near your home. I decided to look into your particular plant a little online. They are going to make; "ammonia, urea, urea ammonium nitrate, Fischer-Tropsch diesel fuel, naphtha, sulfuric acid, and slag/frit for sale for road mix or other uses." None of this sounds like fun stuff I want produced near my home, not to be NIMBY about it. It doesn't even sound like stuff I want produced at all. The slag/frit for sale sounds like their trying to persuade you that the leftovers won't just go back into the landfill. Fat chance.

Approximately "3,000 to 4,000 tons per day of a blend of Powder River Basin (PRB) coal from Wyoming, western Utah bituminous coal, and refinery petcoke," will be trucked down your roads through all those states. That's a lot of dangerously overloaded trucks and petroleum used to ship the coal going down your road. That doesn't count the perhaps equally as large outflow of trucks from the company.

It seems like they are building it right across from a potato processing plant by the river. I wouldn't want that plant anywhere near my rivers. Chances are they won't necessarily intentionally dump leftovers into the river but if an accident happens, which happens a lot, I'm sure that's their release system. I would expect that sulphuric acid will be dumped into the river in a significant killing amount at some point in its life span.

It is a ConocoPhillips gasifier which is a very bad sign. "In 2002, the Political Economy Research Institute rated ConocoPhillips the third-worst polluter in the United States based on EPA emissions data." Another grim note is in Alaska, "The company had violated its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit 470 times over a five-year period." Looks like fishing will soon be a hobby of cancer patients in American Falls.

The water rights are another thing. Water rights are speculative for corporations. They are buying up as much as possible to the detriment of, foremost, humans but secondly plants animals and fish who need it too. Then they own it and when water gets scarcer the price goes up and you will be paying more. Chances are that your area gets its' water from an underground aquifer and while they can act like they know a million gallons a day won't hurt it you can bet your sweet ass it will! Look forward to your well going dry pretty soon.

Now then there is the jobs thing. Sounds like about 150-200 jobs and more during construction. These jobs will probably pay well enough which is a good thing, but they won't necessarily go to your friends. In fact it might inflate your real-estate a bit and put more of a burden on your school system and public services. These jobs might not be very healthy or fulfilling, but they are better than service jobs. But is the town in need of new jobs? Is the town ready to grow that much in that area, especially without the water? Is the town going to get taxes from this company or do they get to shake those off like most new companies? Does the state have to pay for any of the construction costs?

It sounds like they are attempting to sequester their carbon output which will be huge by piping it to Wyoming. Sequestering carbon is theoretical at best, it isn't known whether it stays in the ground. Plus this pipeline, what fields is it slicing up and who pays for all of that?

I stand by my original statement and this toxic sludge plant needs not exist. I put it to you your neighbors and your friends to stop it! But don't listen to me listen to Al Gore on this topic. "I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers," Mr. Gore said, "and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants."

I got my info from these sites
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/pickyourpoison/#conoco
http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2007/07/27/news/breaki ...
http://www.deq.idaho.gov/air/permits_forms/permitting/pca ...

The Black Car Project Killing cars before they kill us!

by wildleaf at 5:23 PM on 28 Aug 2007
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