Word: ashe
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...more PR than reality - currently there's no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. But now the idea of clean coal might be truly dead, buried beneath the 1.1 billion gallons of water mixed with toxic coal ash that on Dec. 22 burst through a dike next to the Kingston coal plant in the Tennessee Valley and blanketed several hundred acres of land, destroying nearby houses. The accident - which released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster - has polluted the waterways of Harriman, Tenn., with potentially...
More than two weeks after the spill, workers and machines are still trying to clear the estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash from around the plant. The breach "is an environmental catastrophe that reveals not only the dangers of burning coal and mismanaging coal combustion waste, but also the need for federal regulation," said Steven Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, at a Senate hearing on the spill on Jan. 8. After Kingston, coal may be considered many things - but it's hard to see how "clean" could be one of them...
That's because, even putting aside climate change-accelerating carbon dioxide, coal remains a highly polluting source of electricity that has serious impacts on human health, especially among those who live near major plants. Take coal ash, a solid byproduct of burned coal. A draft report last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the ash contains significant levels of carcinogens, and that the concentration of arsenic in ash, should it contaminate drinking water, could increase cancer risks by several hundred times. A 2006 report by the National Research Council had similar findings. "This is hazardous waste...
...ash isn't currently classified as hazardous waste. Though the EPA in the past has come close to imposing stricter rules on the treatment of coal ash, the agency has repeatedly backed down in the face of opposition from utilities and the coal industry. As a result, hundreds of coal plants around the U.S. are allowed to dump their leftover sludge in unlined wet ponds like the one used by the Kingston facility. Not only does that raise the risk of accidents like the Kingston spill, but the toxins in the ash could seep into the soil or groundwater, contaminating...
...cheapness of coal depends on the fact that external costs - climate change, or the health impacts of air and water pollution from coal - remain external, paid for not by utilities or coal companies but society as a whole. The coal industry itself estimates that taking better care of fly ash could cost as much as $5 billion a year - and if the government imposed a tax or cap on carbon dioxide, the price of coal would certainly rise. "For all the money the industry has spent to mislead the public, [Kingston] shows that there really is no such thing...