Report Finds Widespread Contamination at Nation's Coal Ash Sites (washingtonpost.com) 123
Nearly all 250 coal-fired plants in operation in the U.S. have leaked chemicals and contaminated the local groundwater supply with toxins [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; you can check the alternative source, and original report (PDF)], according to a report released this week by environmental groups Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice. From a report: The report found that 91 percent of the nation's coal-fired power plants reported elevated levels of contaminants such as arsenic, lithium, chromium and other pollutants in nearby groundwater. In many cases, the levels of toxic contaminants that had leaked into groundwater were far higher than the thresholds set by the Environmental Protection Agency, the groups said.
The examples span the country. At a family ranch south of San Antonio, a dozen pollutants have leaked from a nearby coal ash dump, data showed. Groundwater at one Maryland landfill that contains ash from three coal plants was contaminated with eight pollutants. In Pennsylvania, levels of arsenic in the groundwater near a former coal plant were several hundred times the level the EPA considers safe for drinking. The voluminous data became publicly available for the first time last year because of a 2015 regulation that required disclosures by the overwhelming majority of coal plants.
The examples span the country. At a family ranch south of San Antonio, a dozen pollutants have leaked from a nearby coal ash dump, data showed. Groundwater at one Maryland landfill that contains ash from three coal plants was contaminated with eight pollutants. In Pennsylvania, levels of arsenic in the groundwater near a former coal plant were several hundred times the level the EPA considers safe for drinking. The voluminous data became publicly available for the first time last year because of a 2015 regulation that required disclosures by the overwhelming majority of coal plants.
In before Republicans lie. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously, this is a fact. There is toxic coal ash from coal plants in the groundwater of just about every single state. They claimed this could never happen, we needed to deregulate, now here it is. Prepare for the lies, here they come.
Re:In before Republicans lie. (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2173680-six-pollution-policies-gutted-by-scott-pruitt-and-what-happens-next/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/here-s-a-scorecard-of-the-scott-pruitt-investigations-quicktake
https://earthjustice.org/blog/2018-april/scott-pruitt-doesn-t-play-by-the-rules-and-he-still-can-t-win
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/03/09/on-climate-change-scott-pruitt-contradicts-the-epas-own-website/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/09/epa-scott-pruitt-abandon-clean-power-plan-obama
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304360
"New EPA leadership has thus far aimed at deconstructing, rather than reconstructing, the agency by comprehensively undermining many of the agency's rules, programs, and policies while also severely undercutting its budget, work capacity, internal operations and morale," concluded the study, titled "The Environmental Protection Agency in the Early Trump Administration: Prelude to Regulatory Capture."
The study, part of the American Journal of Public Health's special issue on climate change, adds to the mounting scrutiny and criticism of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's policy, personnel and operational decisions, which sometimes weave together.
For instance, the study suggests that the undermining of the EPA's public health mission is enabled in part by Pruitt and his aides making policy decisions with little input from longtime staff and scientists.
Such isolation is cemented by "the extraordinary lengths that Pruitt has [gone to] to preserve secrecy and autonomy from the EPA career staff, such as cordoning his office wing off from career employees, reportedly forbidding note taking at some meetings and employing 24-hour armed guards," the report said. The study was accepted by the peer-reviewed journal in February of this year, before some of the recent scandals around Pruitt had surfaced, including his condo rental from the wife of a lobbyist. He currently faces at least 10 (14!) investigations from his EPA tenure.
Re:In before Republicans lie. (Score:5, Insightful)
Learn your from you're. I'm saying the Democrats pushed for the EPA to do its job of regulating this, and "deregulate it all" assholes (mostly republicans but there are a few dem morons too, Manchin, etc) won out short-term and sold out our country.
Coal barons don't care if you have contaminated water, they're billionaires. They import Evian by the truckload, you Republican pawns in West Virginia get to drink the tar for all they care.
Stop being a (lol, quasi) useful tool of pollution apologists. Stop polluting yourself willfully. There's nothing patriotic about being a sellout or liar, GOP.
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Whoever is screwing the EPA is not getting my vote or anybody I can convince otherwise. Without the EPA we'd all be drinking tar and breathing smog.
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There's also nothing patriotic about being an ungrateful ignoramus denying her own role in society. The coal was burned to create electricity that you wanted and society demanded. Your hands are as dirty as the roughest coal miner.
Re: In before Republicans lie. (Score:1)
I know it may be seen as such a waste of something dense, reactive and dangerous but what if I told you that you could nuke for electricity!?
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Riiiight. So that means we shouldn't regulate it at all. Makes perfect sense.
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Yes and No. In general, it was not civilians that decided on Coal for electricity.
However, it was foolish far lefties that screamed against Nukes.
Then they screamed against Coal.
Now they will scream against nat gas, since Nat gas, semi-trucks and planes are America's growing sources of CO2/pollution (interestingly, as I pointed out before, automotives did NOT cause America's CO2 increase this last year).
And all of that with EVERYBODY esp the far rig
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We just have to figure a way to safely control or dispose of the weapons grade plutonium.
There ought to be some sort of prize for your use of the word "just" in that sentence.
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It took years for anything to get down to the groundwater. Likely it has been seeping down since the 1960s to show up now.
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Well, no. Wrong. It takes roughly 1 year for groundwater to enter the tappable aquifer depending on topography. However it has been going on that long, so that part is not wrong.
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The "owners" mostly consist of retired people in the form of shareholders. You may get some pushback from that plan when you go to cuff Granny.
Gutting Retirement Funds is The Plan (Score:1)
That's the plan. If you gut the pension funds, then the pensioners are forced to vote Democrat to get SS increased to cover the theft from the leftists.
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Nuclear plants = socialism.
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No need to lie, without burning that coal we'd be living in poverty and have short lives. the benefits far outweighed the negatives, fossil fuel use built our civilization.
Re: In before Republicans lie. (Score:1)
Nuclear?
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Yes civilization recently started using nuclear and other types of power... 80% comes from fossil fuel though.
I do support moving to non-polluting fuel, that's within our reach now. But I was only speaking of centuries of progress made with fossil fuel power.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
All our nuclear power plants was made 1972-1985, so there's been none for made for the last 34 years and they started showing up 47 years ago.
(That power do pollute too but less, then again wind- and watermills are older, and we still make almost half of our electricity using hydro power.)
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Sweden isn't the norm though, I was speaking of planet earth, which gets 80% its power from fossil fuel, centuries into the industrial revolution. Sure, I'd like that to change but reality can't be denied.
Re: In before Republicans lie. (Score:1)
Or you could had used slaves. Renewable and ecological.
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The Flintstones is NOT a documentary. The world is not flat either. Get your head out of your ass.
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You seem to be utterly ignorant of history, engineering and science. You have nothing that supports your sarcastic view while I have centuries of progress and increase in human lifespan, health and happiness on mine.
You are the one with your head up your ass.
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What you have is all of us selling our birthright for a mess of pottage. The pottage contained longer life for now, better health for now, somewhat greater happiness for now. The birthright was a functioning climate and a planet free of coal ash, mercury, etc.
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I see you used the past tense: "built". Then you would probably agree that, while fossil fuel jumpstarted our technological society to its present state, that is not a justification for its continued use indefinitely (until they run out.) In other words: it's time to move on. Furthermore, while fossil fuels' relative abundance got industrialization rolling at a tremendous pace, it made us complacent and inefficient about how we use energy. Again: we claim to be a
Lithium? (Score:2)
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No need for Trump to get involved.
No one cares about the problem.
Extra info (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a link to a website by the company that did this report https://ashtracker.org/ [ashtracker.org] Cool stuff.
Re:Blame the green lobby (Score:5, Informative)
We could have stopped burning coal decades ago if it weren't for them standing in the way of progress.
This is utterly ridiculous. Existing nuclear plants are closing left/right because it's not profitable to keep them open. This has nothing to do with the "green lobby", which has so little power it can't even stop crap like coal ash contamination. Nuclear can't compete with cheap natural gas right now.
The real reason Nuclear didn't take off was economic. The plants are crazy expensive, take decades to build, and nobody wants to fund them. The idea there's some "green lobby" with magical powers that's stopping it all is laughable.
Oh, and you left out the fact that coal plants are ALSO closing left/right because of natural gas and phracking!
You pro-nuclear people think the only power source in the world is either Coal or Nuclear.
Bullshit (Score:1)
85% of the cost of nuclear construction is due to malicious "environmental" lawsuits and ensuing delays. Just the ongoing regulatory paperwork cost ... just the paperwork ... is on the order of $30M/year per plant in costs and fees to the NRC. That's paperwork, not engineering or design or fabrication or maintenance.
Think about this: Only nuclear has the externalities built in. Every kwh of power produced by a nuclear plant has money going into the shutdown and cleanup of the plant. Coal? Nope. Gas? Nope. W
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Nuclear can't compete with cheap natural gas right now.
No, it's wind and solar subsidies killing nuclear power right now. Here's just one of many recent articles discussing the issue:
https://www.city-journal.org/a... [city-journal.org]
Nuclear and natural gas don't really compete with each other. Nuclear is a base load electrical source, and that's about all it can do. Natural gas is far more versatile, being used for base load power in combined cycle power plants, peaking power in single cycle power plants, as heating for industrial and residential spaces, cooking fuel, vehicl
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We need an adult agreement based on rational decision making...
Alas, the type of get-together required will be deemed illegal by the current powers that be.
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We need an adult agreement based on rational decision making...
Alas, the type of get-together required will be deemed illegal by the current powers that be.
The powers that be are out to exterminate each other. Rationality is dead and buried. The adults are suffering from Alzheimers.
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...The green lobby's anti-nuclear stance has done massive damage to the environment
since we're all seemingly stuck in over-exaggerate mode ....
Compare the actual physical damage done by dumping 110 million tons of coal ash into our back yards vs a few lobbyists sitting around chatting about nuclear power with congressional staffers over expensive lattes.
Interview the people who lived near Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl for a human perspective on nuclear power. Maybe concentrate on the survivors, as the dead tell no tales.
The Nuclear biz more or less shot itself in the foot. It doe
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Compare the actual physical damage done by dumping 110 million tons of coal ash into our back yards vs a few lobbyists sitting around chatting about nuclear power with congressional staffers over expensive lattes.
Interview the people who lived near Fukushima Daiichi and Chernobyl for a human perspective on nuclear power. Maybe concentrate on the survivors, as the dead tell no tales.
Yes, let's compare nuclear and coal.
Per Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] there were fewer than 10,000 deaths from Chernobyl.
Per the US Dept of Labor [msha.gov]2016 was the first year with fewer than 100,000 coal miner deaths in the US. The peak 100 years ago was nearly 1 million per year.
So, yeah, lets compare 10,000 deaths from nuclear power to 10,000,000 deaths just from coal mining alone. I just can't believe how irrational people are about this topic.
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You've misread the DOL chart.
2016 was the first year with fewer than 100,000 coal miners.
There were 8 fatalites in 2016, down from a high of over 3,000 in 1907.
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So, yeah, lets compare 10,000 deaths from nuclear power to
10,000,000
10,000,000
10,000,000
104,866 deaths just from coal mining alone. I just can't believe how irrational people are about this topic.
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Hmm...survivors of Fukushima: everyone who was there, but for one guy who died last year. Okay, should be pretty easy to talk to the survivors, since pretty much everyone over eight is still doing fine.
Survivors of Chernobyl: that one is a bit harder, what with the Soviet Union not liking to admit errors. That said, two immediate de
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Green energy has the DNA of fossil fuels.
We don't use green to extract, process, maintain, repair, and recycle green.
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Huh? What are you even talking about? Hillary is still on her lame excuse tour, and every article on the Democrats constant string of screw-ups is a new "Republicans Pounce". I'm sure you will be one of the first propagandist to go when the revolution happens.
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Excellent. Keep talking about Hillary. Keep coming back to that while Bernie wins the next election. Keep talking about her emails even after the win.
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If there weren't all these poor brown people like me, the rich white men wouldn't burn the coal to make the electricity that we're both using to run these computers to have a discussion about how evil these rich white men are for providing us with the privilege.
Quit trying to put the blame for your own actions off on somebody else. The coal plants were built and operated, because WE, as a society, WANTED them built and operated. I bet you're even using electric to heat your home and cook your food. What
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If you had left out the insults I might have modded you up.
Next time keep it short, simple and non-toxic:
"The green lobby is so fanatically anti-nuclear" - That doesn't have anything to do with coal ash over the last 50 years, which the "green lobby" has fought the entire time.
At least he said "lobby" and didn't accuse all environmentalists. I'm as much of a tree-hugging dirt-worshiper as the next hippy which is why I've always thought we should have more nuclear power. There are too many extremists among us and in many ways they are just as idiotic as the people "rolling coal" in their over-sized pickup trucks.
Some "environmental activists" are just terrorists and those who
Easy way to fix (Score:1)
Make coal great again!
A better study (Score:3)
would also have checked all the coal plants that have been shutdown. If you add all them in, you could get closer to 100% contaminated.
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Maybe the investigators didn't want to perish in the study.
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Most coal plants that were shut down were converted to natural gas.
And the piles of coal ash from as long ago as 1882 just magically disappeared when they were converted?
Chrome (Score:1)
I think Google has contaminated more of the planet than just coal power plants with Chromium...
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OK, it's modded to just 1, but I think it's funny.
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Which is really sad, because I start with a +2 score. So SOMEONE didn't like it. OH WELL!
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It's am inside joke and we're the only ones who got it.
"News for nerds, stuff that matters."
We're the cool kids.
easily resolved with "science" (Score:2)
just need a crack crew of trump golf club members to publish a 'scientific' study showing that coal ash is healthy.
problem solved.
"Tainted"? One man's trash.... (Score:2)
....Lithium shortage expected... ...Chromium prices jump on severe supply shortage....
(https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/17068/Lithium-Shortage-Expected-Due-to-Lack-of-Mines.aspx)
https://www.metalbulletin.com/... [metalbulletin.com]
Sounds like that's not an ash pile, it's a gold mine.
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Easily mitigated ... (Score:2)
... by altering the "safe," levels of contamination. [/s]
want to remove this? (Score:2)
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True. But Fukushima isn't the water table in 48 states, from which we are now drinking. Coal contamination is a big problem, assuming you don't want a nation of Mercury/Lead contaminated Republican blank-shooting retards exclusively.
Re: Not nearly as comtaminated as Fukishima or Che (Score:1)
A foreign agent is introduced to our water supply to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. I realized this after shooting blanks... How do you know it was republicans? That's the way your hard core commie works.
Re:Not nearly as comtaminated as Fukishima or Cher (Score:5, Informative)
These places literally glow in the dark and will kill life within minutes.
More radioactive material is emitted by coal plants than by nuclear plants worldwide. Does spreading out the health consequences over the nation, rather than having a really bad problem in one area, make it better? Oh, coal also has really bad problems in specific areas: the various "mouth of Hell" sites where a mine caught fire, and the site will keep burning for decades, perhaps centuries.
Nuclear power is a socialist endeavor at this time (Score:1)
The problem with nuclear is that if they do it on a market budget, they risk more dangerous pollution than 100 years of coal ash, and it would last ~10,000 years. And they do it on a market budget, because otherwise it's "socialism" right?
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About that 10,000 years thing, it's FUD.
If we actually reprocess the "waste", we get mostly fuel ready to use and a small amount of actual waste that needs to be contained for 200-500 years depending on how cautious you want to be.
The part that lasts 10,000 years is the same stuff found in naturally occurring rocks, but we can get rid of it by "burning" it in a reactor.
Re: Not nearly as comtaminated as Fukishima or Che (Score:1)
Both disasters together are better than one week of coal burning contamination?
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Actually, they do NOT glow in the dark. While not recommended, there are people living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone eating food they grow and hunt in the area..
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Helen Caldicott? Is that you?
I'm thinking a village in Australia is missing their idiot.
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These places literally glow in the dark
These places literally do no such thing.