Activist documents coal ash dangers in letter to EPA
February 18th, 2010 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
“Are the people of Perry County, Ala., less valuable than the people in Kingston, Tenn.?” asks Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen. The activist sent a complaint letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson this week in an effort to stop shipments of coal ash recovered from the east Tennessee spill site to a poor, black community in Alabama. Residents near the Uniontown, Ala., landfill say the coal ash is stinking up their town. And they, too, worry that the same toxic sludge that poured down on the community of Kingston causing serious damage and threatening human health, may create problems for them as well.
Their complaints seem to have fallen on deaf ears as train car loads of coal ash continue to be shipped into Alabama. But Wathen is speaking out. His letter to the EPA documents serious environmental health threats at the Arrowhead Landfill. Here is what Wathen contends:
- Dangerously high arsenic levels have been found in what’s described as “stinking gray/tannish waste” being pumped nightly from the landfill. Wathen tested the leachate from an on-site pump and found levels of arsenic that was 80 greater than the U.S. safe drinking water standard and far higher than what is considered safe for aquatic life.
- The arsenic-tainted waste runs in the landfill’s roadside ditches at levels that have exceeded safe drinking water limits. This water leads to private land where farm animals drink from surface water.
- An excessive amount of wet material is being dumped into the landfill, threatening the protective liner.
- Contaminated coal ash is falling from overloaded, uncovered trucks and spilling along the road. This contaminates the road in which the trucks travel. Untreated water there currently in flows into the Tayloe Creek. Some worry that when the weather dries out, the residue could become airborne.
- When the train cars hauling coal ash to the landfill are washed off, the runoff is allowed to flow into Tayloe Creek’s drainage basin, raising the same concerns.