Don't let Congress block EPA from regulating dirty coal ash. The your Senator to pass a clean transportation funding bill.
Coal-fired electric power plants generate approximately 140 million tons of leftover ash every year, which they store in ponds, landfills, and abandoned mines around the United States. To date, there are no federal regulations on the disposal of ash.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a version of the federal transportation spending bill that included a provision to forbid the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from ever regulating coal ash disposal.
Coal ash disaster photo by Flickr user appalachian.voices / Creative Commons license
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a version of the federal transportation spending bill that included a provision to forbid the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from ever regulating coal ash disposal.
Coal ash, the toxic remnants of burning coal for electricity, contains a whole host of heavy metals like arsenic, selenium, and lead. It is oftentimes stored in large, unlined pits where it can and often does leach contaminants in our waterways.
According to the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign, "Living near a wet coal ash storage pond is significantly more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, according to a risk assessment done by EPA. . . . The toxins found in coal ash have been linked to organ disease, cancer, respiratory illness, neurological damage and developmental problems. People living with 1 mile of unlined coal ash ponds can have a 1 in 50 risk of cancer —that's more than 2,000 times higher than what EPA considers acceptable."
The U.S Environmental Protection Agency received over 450,000 comments asking for strong standards on coal ash that would protect human health. Let them do their job and complete the regulatory process by removing any coal ash amendments from the final transportation bill.
