coal ash
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Sandstorms of coal ash blanket Moapa River reservation
The Moapa River Indian Reservation is right next to the Reid Gardner Power Station and its coal ash storage ponds. Winds blow the coal ash -- a waste product that contains arsenic, lead, and mercury -- over the reservation. Residents stay indoors, because it's a like a sandstorm and they can taste the ash in their months. Even so, they have health issues like asthma and thyroid dysfunction, conditions that have been linked to coal ash.
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Will Chicago be the last city with a coal plant?
It has been a big month for clean energy in the Midwest. Yesterday, We Energies announced plans to repower its coal-burning power plant in downtown Milwaukee. Earlier this week Dominion announced plans to retire the State Line plant in Indiana just over the border from Chicago. Last week LG&E indicated it will replace the Cane […]
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What I want for Mother's Day
This Sunday, I will be celebrating my second Mother’s Day. My daughter Hazel (pictured at right testifying with me last year) was born last year a few days prior to Mother’s Day, and so I had the unforgettable experience of celebrating my first mother’s day with both of her grandmothers — we called it the […]
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Coal Ash Continues to Poison Americans
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 […]
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How coal could make your car more efficient
That’s right: You may soon be able to use coal to make your car more fuel-efficient. Not by running it on coal — gross! — but building it out of metal mixed with structures found in coal ash. Fly ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains microscopic bubbles called cenospheres. They sound like Clive Barker […]
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EPA puts off long-promised coal ash protections
(This post originally appeared at Facing South.) Communities imperiled by poorly managed coal ash won’t be getting help from the federal government any time soon. The Obama administration announced last week that it would not issue long-awaited federal regulations this year after all. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson shared the news in a March […]
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Hexavalent chromium pollution linked to coal ash disposal
The landmark $333 million court settlement that propelled legal researcher Erin Brockovich to environmental stardom involved the contamination of a California town’s groundwater with hexavalent chromium, a toxic compound known to cause cancer. Now the same dangerous heavy metal, usually associated with steel manufacturing and metal plating, has been discovered seeping from coal ash disposal […]
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EPA targets polluters who do their business on poor communities
Whether it's coal ash or hazardous waste or just bad air, low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be dumped on.
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Last Chance to Tell EPA We Want Strong Coal Ash Safeguards
The comment period ends tomorrow for the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed federal safeguards for toxic coal ash. Coal ash is the by-product of burning coal for electricity, and it contains a toxic mix of chemicals: mercury, arsenic, lead, chromium, selenium, and more. We’ve been calling for strong federal safeguards from EPA during the comment period […]
