Two years, one month and two weeks ago, Tennessee experienced a very unnatural disaster: The spill of hundreds of millions of gallons of coal ash sludge out across the countryside, knocking houses off their foundations, filling rivers with toxins, stopping trains in their tracks, and poisoning drinking water with heavy metals.
Today, that toxic coal sludge is still spilling across America. After all, it had to go somewhere – the dam that was supposed to hold it back had burst open.
One of the places that has been accepting the nasty coal sludge has been a landfill in Perry County, Alabama. The arrangement hasn’t been working out well, for Alabamans, however. Residents of Perry County who live close to the facility where the coal sludge is being treated have been complaining of an strongly offensive sulfurous smell signaling air pollution that keeps them inside their homes, and the potential for contamination of groundwater with arsenic and other deadly materials such as people living near the site of the original coal sludge spill have been dealing with.
Liquids leaching out of the Perry County landfill where the Tennessee coal sludge has been dumped themselves are poisonous. For a while, a company had been trying to treat these liquids to remove the toxins, but now, that company has announced it won’t take the liquids any more. Where will the vile fluids go next? Behind another dam, waiting to burst?
This continuing mess ought to remind people that there’s no such thing as clean coal. Even if clean coal advocates were to achieve their goal of sequestering carbon, they’d still have to figure out how to deal with the huge amounts of toxic coal sludge produced by the process of burning coal. As the mess in Perry County indicates, there’s still not much clue about how to do that. People who defend Barack Obama’s big bear hug of the clean coal hoax have yet to come up with an excuse for that.
To characterize coal ash as “toxic” is a misrepresentation. First of all coal ash is not a single entity. Coal ash includes both fly ash and bottom ash, which are “coal combustion byproducts.” The chances of a person being exposed to the TRACE toxic substances in coal combustion byproducts in an amount considered toxic is incredibly remote. This issue is complex. Please encourage your readers to consider the impact a “hazardous” label would have on recycling these materials. Today about 45 percent of coal combustion byproducts are recycled. If not, they are disposed of, which means MORE material in landfills. Labeling and fear tactics take logic and sound science out of this important discussion. Please visit http://www.acaa-usa.org for more information.
…says the Director of Communications for ACAA-USA, an industry organization that describes its purpose as the promotion of “coal combustion byproducts.” She’s paid a pretty penny to say what she says.
Green Man, do you have links to primary source documents that aren’t from the coal ash industry which might describe the toxicity level of coal ash?
Melissa Hendricks, yes or no: are the coal sludge liquids leaching out of the Perry County landfill toxic, or aren’t they?
Why, yes I do, Jim.
Results from samples taken from the Kingston Tennessee Valley coal ash spill: http://www.appvoices.org/resources/Preliminary_TVA_Ash_Spill_Sample_Data_AppVoices_December%202008.pdf
From the ADMINISTRATIVE ORDER AND AGREEMENT ON CONSENT in the matter of TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant Release Site (http://www.epa.gov/Region4/kingston/May8TVAKingstonFinal106Order.pdf) – “Sampling results have revealed levels of arsenic in the ash material that exceed Region 4’s residential removal action level of 39 mg/kg. In addition, shortly after the release, arsenic was detected in surface water samples at concentrations in excess of the Tennessee Water Quality Criteria (TWQC) for Domestic Water Supply and in excess of the human health aquatic organism consumption criteria. In the days immediately following the release, arsenic, as well as numerous other contaminants, including cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, selenium, and zinc, were also detected in surface water at concentrations which exceeded the National Recommended Ambient Water Quality Criteria (AWQC) for protection of aquatic life (based on both the Chronic Continuous Criterion and the Chronic Maximum Criterion).”
These are just two examples of a great number of documents available.
Thanks, Green Man. Let’s see if Melissa Hendricks, Director of Communications for the coal ash promoter ACAA-USA, will answer my question.