Articles by David Roberts

Stiffer regulation of coal ash would cost the industry billions

If I've said it once I've said it, oh, around eleven kazillion times now: "coal is cheap" because the coal industry externalizes costs.

Take, for instance, coal ash. It contains several substances that are classified as toxics individually, but the ash itself isn't thus classified. That means it can be stored in enormous pools with no liners, behind earthen dams that, as the disaster in Tennessee illustrates again, periodically fail.

What would happen if ash were classified as toxic? The answer can be found in this stellar piece from Bloomberg.

Increased regulation would bring costs to upgrade or close more than 600 landfills and waste ponds at 440 plants nationwide. While the Environmental Protection Agency put the price tag at $1 billion a year in 2000, power generators predict the cost would be as high as $5 billion, said Jim Roewer, executive director of the industry-funded Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, in a telephone interview.

Why so costly?

An EPA report in 2000 found a quarter of retention ponds and 57 percent of landfills lacked liners to prevent pollution from leaking into nearby water supplies, though the 2007 follow-up study found such controls more common at newer sites.

So much for cheap.

Also note this macabre/hilarious bit:

Tennessee coal ash spill contains high levels of toxic heavy metals

According to some just-released test results, the coal ash at the Harriman sludge spill contains high levels of toxic heavy metals, some up to 300 times the legal limit:

According to the tests, arsenic levels from the Kingston power plant intake canal tested at close to 300 times the allowable amounts in drinking water, while a sample from two miles downstream still revealed arsenic at approximately 30 times the allowed limits. Lead was present at between twice to 21 times the legal drinking water limits, and thallium levels tested at three to four times the allowable amounts.

All water samples were found to contain elevated levels of arsenic, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel and thallium. The samples were taken from the immediate area of the coal waste spill, in front of the Kingston Fossil plant intake canal just downstream from the spill site, and at a power line crossing two miles downstream from the spill.

This comes via the Appalachian Voices blog, a great source of breaking info and pictures from the spill. Full release beneath the fold:

Who will be the next victims?

A couple weeks ago an earthen damn holding back billions of gallons of coal sludge broke and let loose a torrent of toxic filth.

 

Wonder how long this one is going to hold.

Au revoir, 2008

Well, here we are on the last day of 2008. I feel like I should do some kind of valedictory post, a look back over the year, or predictions for next year, or some kind of list, or ... something. Everybody else is.

But I got nothin'. It's funny, at the end of a year when the world seemed to get faster and crazier -- the epic drama of the election, shriller and shriller warnings from scientists about global warming, the biggest economic crash in a half-century -- I find myself preoccupied with with the small-scale and domestic. My strongest memories of this year will mostly be of moments laughing around the dinner table; my three year old's passionate-if-incoherent stories about the adventures of the "Minium Falcon"; my five year old's first attempts to sound out written words; reading the Narnia books at night, my older boy's head on my shoulder, the little one blinking hazily against sleep.

Thank goodness for the bubble of joy and calm I've got up here in North Seattle. 'Cause it's been an intense year, and next year -- nay, the next decade -- is shaping up to be a white-knuckle roller coaster ride. I'll jump back on it next week, but for now, I'm enjoying the quiet.

Peace and, as always, many thanks to all Grist's readers for their support, knowledge, passion, and participation.

[Postscript: check out Grist's top green stories of 2008.]