Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

People who live near coal-burning power plants have as high as a 1 in 50 chance of developing cancer and have an increased risk of damage to their lungs, kidneys, liver and other organs, according to a 2009 report by environmental legal advocacy group, Earthjustice. Elisa Young, a resident of Meigs County, Ohio, the site of the country’s second-largest concentration of coal-firing plants, says she’s seen the havoc coal waste has wreaked on her family and friends. “I’ve lost neighbors to lung cancer who have never smoked,” she told Huffington Post. “I’ve lost them to brain cancer, breast, throat , colon, multiple myeloma, pre-leukemia. … There isn’t a house on this road that hasn’t been touched by cancer.”

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Concerned citizens and environmental activists are opposing plans to expand a coal ash pond along the Ohio River in northern Kentucky because they say if the pond ruptures, it could contaminate drinking water. The proposal from LG&E would build 100-foot-tall walls around an existing coal ash pond, giving it more capacity than the coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston, Tenn., plant, which failed last year and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic waste on to a neighboring community.

That spill, called one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, knocked houses off their foundations, damaged property and contaminated waterways. The TVA is currently undergoing an estimated three-year, $1.2 billion cleanup effort to restore the land.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has hired a new gun to head up the utility’s cleanup efforts in the town it so badly damaged when a TVA coal ash impoundment pond broke last December sending a wave of toxic material on to homes, property and the Emory River. That hired gun, Steve McCracken, is considered a nationally recognized leader on cleanup and remediation projects who has spent his career removing hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials from large industrial sites, excavating sludge, treating water and restoring landscape. As manager of the TVA coal ash spill recovery effort, McCracken says, “It is my intent to be here until the job is done … done to the satisfaction of the community.”

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