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.

Source: The Institute for Southern Studies, Facing South

SOURCE: Coal Ash Spill › Activist documents coal ash dangers in letter to EPA

Toxic coal ash

“If coal ash poses an unacceptable level of risk, inconsistent state standards should be immediately replaced with national guidelines that would put the safety of the people in one community on the same level as families living in another,” said Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and circulated around the House of Representatives.

Coal ash is not considered a hazardous material, and thus does not fall under federal regulation. However, improvements in coal ash burning facilities over the decades have made the smoke released into the air much cleaner. Those toxins instead settle in the coal ash left behind. Tests show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium – toxins that have linked to serious health issues such as cancer, liver damage and neurological complications. That toxic ash is stored in dry or wet landfills throughout the country.

A December 2008 coal ash impoundment breach at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) plant brought the question of the safety of coal ash into the spotlight. Last year’s coal ash spill dumped more than a billion gallons of coal ash on to a neighboring community, knocking houses off their foundations, destroying property, and contaminating nearby waterways. Environmentalists called it the largest environmental disaster of its kind in U.S. history. The TVA began an estimated three-year, $1 billion cleanup of the area, which includes relocating the recovered coal ash to landfills in other counties and states. The first shipments of recovered coal ash have already been shipped by railcar to a landfill in Perry County, Alabama.

Storing the recovered coal ash in Perry County will generate about $3 million in storage fees and bring in about 30 jobs to the poverty-stricken, predominantly black county, which some local officials consider a boon. But people who live and work there say they fear they are sitting on a time bomb that could one day destroy their property and livelihoods.

Earlier this year, Davis met with residents of Perry County who voiced their concerns, asking if there are any guarantees that the dangerous toxins will leach into drinking water or create any health problems now or in the future. Davis’ letter to the EPA aims to address those concerns and move forward EPA efforts to establish federal safety standards that are balanced among all states.

Source: Selma Times Journal

SOURCE: Coal Ash Spill › Rep. Davis fights for people of Perry County in coal ash debate

The phrase is repeated over and over in a short film by Alabama activist Betsy Ramaccia. You can view the film on www.AshHoles.org. Last month at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) meeting in Tennessee, Ramaccia dressed in a haz-mat suit and handed out fake newspapers with the headline “The New Ash Hole of Alabama,” and directed them to the Web site. There, viewers can hear the voices and see the faces of several Uniontown, Alabama residents pleading with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to protect them from the dangers of coal ash. The Web site also has a form letter asking for protection where people can add their names and e-mails and submit them to Jackson.

“This is a case of environmental injustice, in which an underrepresented population of mostly African-American citizens who live at or below the poverty line are being taken advantage of. I ask that you protect me and my fellow citizens of Uniontown, Alabama, and the United States of America by calling coal ash what it is: a toxic substance that needs to be federally regulated,” the letter reads.

Earlier this week, the EPA approved the TVA’s request to store more than half of the toxic coal ash it recovers from east Tennessee site on which it spilled last December when a TVA impoundment pond burst, to a landfill near Uniontown in Perry County. Perry County is one of the poorest counties in Alabama. More than 30 percent of its population lives in poverty and the vast majority of residents are African-American.

Coal ash contains dangerous toxins such as arsenic and lead, which have been associated with serious health concerns.

Is it right to store dangerous material if it only affects the poor? Residents who expressed themselves on Ramaccia’s film don’t think so: “Ms. Jackson. Please help us here in Uniontown, Alabama.”

SOURCE: Coal Ash Spill › Uniontown residents plead with EPA, ‘Will you help us?’