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From Donna Lisenby, Appalachian Voices Upper Watauga Riverkeeper:
Well, it's about time.
After months of delays, the US Environmental Protection Agency finally released a list of high hazard fly ash dams on June 29. And it turns out that almost a third of the sites, twelve total, are located in North Carolina—more than any other state.
While I commend the EPA for finally making public this list of particularly dangerous coal fly ash impoundments, this is certainly not the first time the government has attempted to keep embarrassing environmental facts out of public view.
Public safety cannot be protected under a cloak of secrecy. The government's failure to release a list of 44 high-risk fly ash dams was, until Monday, a dereliction of duty to citizens – especially North Carolina citizens, thousands of whom live downriver from twelve of the highest risk fly ash dams in the nation.
Documented studies have proven numerous impacts to public health and the environment from coal ash, which contains high levels of numerous toxic chemicals. In 2002, the EPA conducted a review that indicated people living near coal ash waste sites have a 1 in 50 chance of contracting cancer from drinking water contaminated by heavy metals in coal ash, but the results were not released to the public until March of this year. The agency also documented pollution of both ground and surface water at more than 60 coal fly ash waste sites across the nation in a 2007 study.
But it was last December's one billion gallon spill of toxic coal ash at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant in Harriman, TN that introduced the issue of coal fly ash to the general public. The catastrophic failure of a coal ash dam, similar to the ones on the EPA's list, destroyed 40 homes and polluted the Emory River with heavy metals.
After experiencing the devastation of the Emory River from the TVA ash spill and learning about the continuing harmful impacts of coal ash to people and the environment, I believe the communities surrounding these 44 sites need to know what is lurking in their back yard.
Hopefully that awareness will turn into watchful oversight with a demand for regulation and clean up so we won't have any more large scale environmental disasters as a result of the recklessness of the coal industry. This is particularly important for the Charlotte region, whose high hazard coal ash dams are located in close proximity to public drinking water intakes for many communities in Mecklenburg, Lincoln, Gaston and York counties.
Senator Barbara Boxer, a US senator from California, fought the Army Corps of Engineer's attempt to keep the top 44 a secret. “We are pursuing whether the handling of these sites is consistent with the handling of other similar facilities, because of the critical importance of the public's right to know about threats in their communities,” she said in a press conference June 12. “Coal combustion waste is subject to very limited regulation – in fact, there are stronger protections for household garbage than for coal ash across the country.”
Since North Carolina has more high hazard coal ash dams than any other state in the union, it is imperative for us to protect public safety and environmental health by properly regulating these dangerous toxic waste pits. According to Representative Pricey Harrison, who introduced a bill to regulate coal ash dams in the North Carolina House, “Fly ash waste ponds present an immediate threat to our state's environment and natural resources, and to North Carolina citizens that live close to these toxic waste dumps.”
Harrison's position is that we need to authorize the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to monitor and stringently regulate ash dams. “Failure to enforce regulation and remediation of these fly-ash dams could result in a catastrophic spill, much like the disaster in Tennessee,” she warns.
The government has been hiding behind a cloak of secrecy for too many years in its attempts to protect the coal industry. It's time to make public safety priority number one.
