Power plant water discharges are filled with toxic pollution.  (EPA)

Coal-fired power plant pollution is contaminating our water, not just our air. Here’s how: when plants install scrubbers and other emission control devices onto smokestacks to capture air pollution, the chemical waste they pull from the air is then discharged into our waterways.

Not good.

This discharge contains mercury, arsenic, selenium and other toxic chemicals that can cause neurological and developmental damage, harm unborn fetuses in utero, damage internal organs, and cause cancer. Coal plants are the number one toxic discharger into our country’s waterways, yet the Environmental Protection Agrency has not reviewed clean water regulations for this industry in more than 30 years.

Until now.

Pennsylvania residents Sabrina Mislevy and Barbara Reed stand near the Little Blue Run coal ash dump site. Litigation has led to the state phasing out the dump by 2016.

It’s been over four years since a billion gallons of toxic coal ash flooded a small town in Tennessee. We’ve been fighting ever since for the EPA to set federally enforceable safeguards to protect the thousands of communities across the country threatened by coal ash, but the agency has yet to act.

But just because the EPA isn’t doing anything doesn’t mean nothing is being done. While the agency twiddles its regulatory thumbs on much-needed protections from the arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium and other pollutants commonly found in coal ash, many local and national environmental groups are taking coal ash pond owners to court to get them to clean up the coal ash mess. The Center for Public Integrity published a story today outlining some of the dozens of legal actions happening from Montana to North Carolina where groups are challenging coal ash disposal using a variety of environmental laws.

Sen. Boxer takes a stand against false rider tactics.

Some members of the Senate believe it’s acceptable to write up legislation to prevent the EPA from regulating toxic coal ash—and then attach it to a completely unrelated bill.

They tried unsuccessfully earlier this summer to put it into must-pass legislation that would help maintain and improve our nation’s highway infrastructure. They’re considering including it as a “rider” on the pending “fiscal cliff” bill. They even talked about putting it on a spending bill for the Department of Defense.

It seems some senators know no bounds on allowing polluters to continue dumping this waste—filled with arsenic, lead, mercury and more—into unlined and unmonitored ponds and landfills next to coal-fired power plants. Already, coal ash has polluted lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers at nearly 200 sites across the country.

But yesterday, one senator made clear that she’s not willing to allow dangerous environmental riders onto unrelated legislation.

Aerial view of the devastating 2008 coal ash disaster in Tennessee. (TVA)

Four years ago, a small Tennessee town woke up to a nightmare. A nearby coal ash pond that held back more than a billion gallons of toxic waste collapsed, sending a flood of ash and dirt right through their doors. In the weeks and months that followed, an entire nation began to see the magnitude of the coal ash threat.

Cleaning up the Clinch River near Kingston, TN, continues. Just last week, the Tennessee Valley Authority—the owners of the coal ash dam that burst—announced plans to let nature take its course in removing the remaining half a million tons of ash.  Coal ash activist, Watauga Riverkeeper and Earthjustice client Donna Lisenby summed it up best: "Five hundred cubic yards is enough coal ash to fill a football field almost 94 feet high from end zone to end zone. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, chromium and many other toxic pollutants. Leaving that much ash in the river system to combine with all the other legacy pollutants just increases the total pollutant load."

(Shutterstock)

It’s Groundhog Day in the House of Representatives. Once again, coal company allies are leading a charge to pass a symbolic vote that would reinforce their disdain for any plans to clean up coal ash ponds and landfills with federal minimum safeguards. But the symbolism has real-world impacts: nearly 200 coal ash sites have already contaminated nearby lakes, rivers, streams and aquifers with dangerous chemicals that cause cancer, organ damage and even death.

Representatives will vote on an arcane Motion to Instruct, which tells the 47 members of the House and Senate who are on the conference committee for a massive transportation bill package to include a bad amendment on coal ash. That amendment snuffs out any possibility for the EPA to set federal regulations for safe coal ash disposal and was attached to the version of the transportation bill the House passed last month.

Campaign Director Jared Saylor and Policy & Legislation intern Adriane Underwood carry letters from more than 50,000 Earthjustice supporters who support protecting the Arctic.

On a muggy Tuesday morning, two polar bears lumbered south on 17th Street in Washington D.C. A walrus waved at drivers honking their horns. A sandpiper flapped its wings as it passed food trucks and coffee shops. And, 40 representatives from more than a dozen environmental groups wore bright blue shirts emblazoned with the logo “SAVE THE ARCTIC.”

Paws, wings, shirts and all, they headed towards the White House with a few things to tell the president. Joined by a few hundred activists, they gathered to deliver more than one million comments from concerned citizens, asking President Obama to stop plans by Shell Oil to drill in the remote, fragile waters of the Arctic Ocean this summer.

The 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, TN, motivated the EPA to propose the first ever federal rules regarding safe disposal of coal ash in 2010. (TVA)

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Common Cause, a nonprofit watchdog group, was using thousands of documents it received to bolster a claim that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) violates its nonprofit status by practicing in state and federal lobbying. ALEC, which has been in the news lately, is a corporate funded conservative group composed of lobbyists and elected officials that often drafts and votes on legislative language on a variety of issues that undermine the health and safety of the American public. Their initiatives include measures to weaken labor and environmental laws, and most notoriously, "Stand Your Ground" laws, such as the one being used as a defense in the murder of Florida teen Trayvon Martin.

It should come as no surprise then that ALEC also drafted and adopted a resolution pertaining to relaxed federal protections for coal ash.

Currently, no federal coal ash safeguards exist. A 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, TN, motivated the EPA to propose the first ever federal rules regarding safe disposal of coal ash in 2010. After a lengthy public hearing process, those rules are still pending final approval.

It seems reasonable that if something were to cause us harm, we’d like to know about it—such as a faulty part in a car that would cause the brakes to fail. It’s the way we protect ourselves and our families, by avoiding those things that might cause us harm, or at least being made aware of the risks. Seems logical enough, right?

Unfortunately, some of the companies responsible for divulging this information don’t always use logic as their motivating factor. Case in point: The Toxic Substances Control Act, for all its weaknesses, calls for information about health and safety studies of chemicals used in many everyday products to be made public. For years companies have been claiming that the identity of the chemicals and other basic information in the studies should be kept secret. But recently, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules that would not allow companies to claim these studies as “Confidential Business Information,” which for too long has kept this information out of the public arena.

But industry isn’t going to comply quietly. In a white paper released Jan. 19, the American Chemistry Council makes sweeping assertions about the potential impact of the EPA’s policy, launching a broadside attack on the EPA’s ability to let the public know what these chemicals can do to our bodies and our environment.

It’s not easy to get the President’s attention. He’s a busy guy, and despite sending him thousands of comment letters and making hundreds of phone calls, he just doesn’t seem to understand that Americans don’t want oil drilling in the fragile waters of the Arctic Ocean. These waters are home to polar bears, walrus, bowhead whales and other endangered species. They provide bounty for Native subsistence communities. A spill in these waters would be an environmental disaster unlike any other. The nearest coast guard station is over a thousand miles away, and the frozen seas are battered with heavy winds and ice floes dozens of feet wide.

Well, we’re turning up the volume on our call for Arctic Ocean protections. This week, we’re running an ad in the New York Times and another in Politico, along with radio ads on local talk news stations in Washington, D.C. that ask President Obama, “Why would you allow unsafe drilling in the Arctic Ocean?”

Last summer, we were captivated by a live video feed of oil spewing from a broken well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon disaster woke up America to the dangers of offshore oil drilling, and the government was quick to act.

Shortly after 11 workers lost their lives, the Obama administration shelved plans to drill for oil in America’s Arctic Ocean. If even a fraction of the 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico were to spill in the remote, fragile waters of the Arctic Ocean, the result would be devastating; there is no known technology to clean up oil spilled in these waters where 20-foot swells and huge chunks of ice are common.

But, clearly, those leassons have been unlearned.