Coal ash storage in Tennessee

Yesterday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released final assessment reports that detail the structural integrity of 38 coal ash dams.  The agency began inspecting coal ash dams in May 2009, and EPA contractors have, to date, completed assessments of 228 dams.  Of these 228 coal ash dams, EPA inspectors gave a rating of “poor” to 55 dams, about 24 percent of the total inspected.  Nine “poor” rated dams were identified yesterday in Alabama, Colorado, Louisiana and Texas. 

These 55 poor-rated dams could kill people, devastate communities and cause substantial economic and environmental damage should they fail.  The EPA explicitly tells us this.  Of these 55 dams containing millions of gallons of metal-laden sludge, nine are high hazard dams, meaning that if breached, they would likely take human life and 39 were significant hazard dams, defined as dams that would cause substantial economic and environmental harm if they failed. 

The Clean Air Ambassadors who arrived yesterday in Washington, D.C. have some amazing stories to tell, and I spent the better part of yesterday hearing them. Alexandra Allred from Midlothian, TX described a day she spent outside with her son Tommy—a day when he didn’t suffer his usual respiratory issues and could play carefree, like a kid again. “I had my son back,” she told me.

William Anderson, an ambassador from Nevada and Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes, described the coal fly ash that shrouds his community in a haze of toxic dust, choking local residents and concealing the nearby mountains behind a curtain of miasmal fog.

Kimberly Hill of Detroit, MI told me about residents who live near the Marathon oil refinery, which is expanding to refine tar sands crude oil from Canada—one of the dirtiest fossil fuels on earth. Tucked under a toxic blanket, these residents suffer from respiratory disease and unusual forms of cancer.

The ambassadors’ stories spring from pollution, disease, loss of loved ones and other unsavory challenges that life presents. But more importantly, their stories are charged with hope, perseverance and bravery. Many of the ambassadors arrived to tell their tales having never set foot in Washington, D.C., that inner circle of government life where power concentrates imposingly, and too often to the exclusion of the very people whose votes put the powerful in office. To walk in those halls and sit in those offices to tell Very Important People how vital clean air is to one’s community is an act of bravery by which I am awed and humbled.

News that the EPA may delay the coal ash rule until the end of 2012 or even 2013 will come as a bitter disappointment to communities across the United States. Many had faith in Administrator Jackson’s promise that this Administration would finally issue effective controls on toxic ash disposal in 2010.

The regulation of coal ash is already 30 years overdue. In 1976, Congress was cognizant of the threat to health, environment and drinking water from toxic waste, and it mandated that EPA regulate the disposal of both solid and hazardous wastes. In the years that followed, EPA proceeded to regulate hundreds of dangerous waste streams. Nevertheless, powerful interests have kept the regulation of coal ash at bay. In doing so, however, the electric utility industry has created monsters they cannot control—as seen in the release of over a billion gallons of toxic sludge from just one of hundreds of impoundments hanging above communities across the nation.

Tennessee coal ash spill 2008. Photo courtesy United Mountain Defense.

Members of Congress are going to hear from coal ash activists this week. But it’s going to be more than just phone calls and emails; 45 citizens from nine states are flying to Washington D.C.  to tell their coal ash stories to elected representatives and administration officials.

It’s been nearly a year since the Environmental Protection Agency proposed the nation’s first federal standard for coal ash ponds and dumps. Their two-option plan would either regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste, ensuring strong protections and monitoring requirements, or regulate it as non-hazardous waste, leaving discretion up to the states and endangering the drinking water supplies for thousands of communities near these toxic dumps.