Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Clean Energy Program: “It may result in very few properties being cleaned up if that [natural level of arsenic] standard is set artificially high.”
Gavin Kearney, Deputy Managing Attorney, Clean Energy Program: “The whole overarching point (of the federal rules) is that groundwater contamination is a big problem; it’s really unsafe, and we have to prevent it. You can’t let water in (to a coal ash impoundment); you can’t let water out; you can’t let water just sit inside…
Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Clean Energy Program: “Nothing prevents power plants from moving radioactive waste from their own backyards into the backyards and neighborhoods where American families live.”
Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Clean Energy Program: “We see this as the first shot across the bow informing the utilities and states and stakeholders that EPA indeed does find significant noncompliance with the coal ash rule.”
Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Clean Energy Program: “The EPA has not come close to doing a risk assessment of the placement of coal ash in residential areas. They project that these utility sites may be redeveloped in the future and that this ash will pose a problem to human health at that point, which is…
Lisa Evans, Senior Counsel, Clean Energy Program, Earthjustice: “Unless you have a specific rule requiring investigation and cleanup, industry is just not going to do it.”
Earthjustice analyzed industry data to explain, state by state, how and where coal ash is disposed and which dump sites are not yet monitored or regulated.
Coal ash is leaching unsafe levels of toxic pollutants into groundwater at 91% of coal plants. The quasi-public utility, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), has a total of 56 coal ash dumpsites in Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Coal ash is leaching unsafe levels of toxic pollutants into groundwater at 91% of coal plants. There are 88 coal ash dumpsites within two miles of one of the Great Lakes.