Another Reason There is No Such Thing As "Clean" Coal

After coal is burned to create electricity, utilities have to do something with the remaining ash. "Something" could be leaving the ash in great heaps at power plants or trucking it to mines to "dispose" of it.

The disposal of power plant waste, which contains everything present in coal – including toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and cadmium – is not regulated by the federal government.

That’s bad news, according to Jeff Stant with the Clean Air Task Force. Dump Wherever

The unregulated dumping of ash means that power plants pass on their troubles to us. They avoid the costs of building landfills for their wastes that have liners, extensive monitoring, corrective action requirements, financial assurance and other standard safeguards.

The result is water supplies contaminated with heavy metals, toxic salts and radioactivity that have ruined drinking water wells and private property, killed livestock, damaged crops, wiped out fish, reptiles, amphibians and other life and probably harmed people.

The National Research Council, which is a part of the National Academy of Sciences, is launching a study of the effects of dumping power plant waste into coal mines. Environmental groups will be watching and working to make certain that this study is legitimate.

Emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, rose 4 percent in 2003. Coal-fired power plants were the main source of the 10.6 million tons of sulfur dioxide. That total compared with 10.2 million tons in 2002.