Chances are you're near one.Image: Sierra Club/Google MapsDo you live around Clearfield, Penn.? The Shawville coal-fired power plant is spewing more than 1,500 pounds of toxic mercury into your air and water every year. Live near St. Louis? The Labadie coal-fired power plant emits more than 1,400 pounds of mercury every year. And if you live near Bismarck, N.D. -- you have two coal-fired power plants near you (Milton Young and Coal Creek) that emit a combined 1,700 pounds of mercury into your environment annually. Unfortunately, the list of mercury and other toxin-spewing coal plants is long, but now you …

An Open Letter on U.S. Support for New Coal Plants in Africa, from Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, and Bobby Peak, Director of groundWork South Africa. Dear Export Import Bank President Fred Hochberg, As Earth Day approaches we write to express our shock and disappointment at the Export Import Bank's (Ex-Im Bank) continued support for one of the most destructive and polluting sources of energy on earth - coal. The agency's continued support for whatever colossal coal fired power projects happen to come its way demonstrates that it is incapable of utilizing its resources …

Today residents of Chicago watched as the city council delayed a vote on their health. In a committee hearing on the proposed Clean Power Ordinance, the city aldermen delayed a vote on the measure that calls for the two coal-fired power plants within city limits (the Fisk and Crawford plants owned by Midwest Generation) to reduce their pollution by 90%. The hearing is still going now, you can follow the action on Twitter by watching the #chicoal hashtag or going to http://www.WheresMyWalderman.com Midwest Generation bused in employees from out of town to fill the room (and some fell asleep during …

This week, some of them traveled to Washington to tell their stories Mike Eslinger lives near a coal ash waste dump in Sullivan, Indiana. On some days the wind gets the ash blowing around his house so much that he cannot let his two children play outside. Curt Haven lives only 100 feet away from the Little Blue coal ash dump that spans parts of West Virginia and Ohio. He's had thyroid cancer and his wife has thyroid problems, as have many of their neighbors. Last year when the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection tested his water they found …

Earlier today the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) voted to approve a settlement that provides for the single largest coal retirement announcement in the nation's history. The settlement requires the permanent retirement of 18 coal units, totaling 2,700-megawatts of TVA's coal fleet.  In addition, it requires the retirement or clean up of an additional 2,800-megwatts over the next decade.  Ken Ward, reporter at the Charleston Gazette, put those numbers in perspective, stating that just three of the plants being closed bought an amount of coal in 2010 equivalent to four large West Virginia surface mines. This decision also brings …

Penn State students successfully moved their campus off coal.Photo: Sierra ClubNationwide, young people are working to move their college campuses and communities beyond coal to clean energy solutions -- and they are winning. In the past few weeks we've seen three colleges decide to move beyond coal on their campuses, showing yet again that students are helping to lead the fight for clean energy. Just this week we saw Miami University of Ohio announce it would immediately begin reducing the amount of coal burned on campus and eventually eliminate it altogether. Miami students had worked for months to pressure the …

It's a shame that so many in Congress are more concerned about Big Oil and King Coal than they are about public health and our children's future - sadly, that's what we've seen unfold over the past 24 hours, as the Senate voted on legislation attacking the Clean Air Act. The House is expected to vote this afternoon on similar legislation. Fortunately, our clean air protections will survive this first skirmish, but it was just the first shot across the bow, and we will have to remain vigilant in the days and months ahead. Even as I write this post, …

Lance Weyeneth really dislikes leaving northern Michigan and he rarely heads south of the Au Sable River. The avid angler works at one of the most popular fly fishing lodges in the U.S. - and when he's not doing that, he's selling real estate in the same area.  "I'm selling dreams up here. People want to move to 'Pure Michigan,'" he said, in a nod to the state's tourism motto. But Lance left all that beauty behind for a few days - he's in Washington, DC, this week because he's concerned about keeping Michigan (and the rest of the U.S.) …

With so much in the news lately, you might have missed these three recent, major victories in the effort to move America beyond coal, so I wanted to share them with you: Illinois: Last week Governor Pat Quinn vetoed two bills that would have put natural gas customers on the hook for two new coal plants that would turn coal into a synthetic form of natural gas, proposed by Leucaida and Power Holdings. The Sierra Club and our allies have been working hard to stop these two dirty and polluting projects (the photo is of a Sierra Club protest of the …

We are happy to see the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today propose a critical air quality standard to protect Americans against life-threatening air pollution such as mercury and arsenic from power plants, which currently emit air toxics with no limits.  According to EPA, each year this new protection will save as many as 17,000 lives and prevent at least 120,000 cases of childhood asthma. Indeed, although coal-fired power plants are our No. 1 human-caused source of mercury pollution, the industry has NEVER been required to limit their mercury emissions -- until now. Mercury is one example of a particularly harmful …