EPA Reveals Locations of "Secret" Coal Ash Storage Sites
“The presence of liquid coal ash impoundments near our homes, schools and business could pose a serious risk to life and property in the event of an impoundment rupture” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in a public statement. “By compiling a list of these facilities, EPA will be better able to identify and reduce potential risks by working with states and local emergency responders.”
According to the official EPA statement, “designating these units reflects EPA’s commitment to assessing risks and vulnerabilities in order to protect critical infrastructure—and the American people—from disaster. In discussing the 44 most hazardous sites—out of 427 coal ash storage “impoundments” nationwide—the agency was also quick to point out that “a high hazard potential rating is not related to the stability of those impoundments but to the potential for harm should the impoundment fail.”
For the people who live alongside or downstream from these hazardous storage sites, that's like saying a vicious dog is only dangerous if it gets out of the yard.
In fairness to Jackson and the EPA, after the devastating December coal ash spill in Tennessee the agency did send a request to all electric utilities asking for information about “coal combustion waste facilities (or coal ash impoundments). But after the list was compiled and the 44 most hazardous sites were identified, the EPA went along with a request by the Department of Homeland Security and the Army Corps of Engineers to keep the locations secret from the public—the very people Jackson now says could be facing “serious risk to life and property” in the event of an accident.
The list shows 44 sites at 26 locations in 10 states: Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and West Virginia. All 44 coal ash storage sites with high hazard potential are located near coal-fired electric power plants operated by one of 11 utilities named on the list. Public disclosure of the 44 hazardous waste sites came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on June 19, 2009 by a coalition of environment groups.
"Now that EPA has compiled this list of 'high hazard potential' sites, the next step is to clean these sites up expeditiously, so that they no longer present a hazard to downstream communities,” said Bruce Nilles, director of the Beyond Coal Campaign for the Sierra Club, one of the environmental groups that filed the FOIA request with the EPA.
“At the same time, EPA must move forward to close the regulatory loopholes that the coal industry has enjoyed for far too long,” he said. “It is time to require the coal industry to treat coal ash as the hazardous waste that it is.”
The EPA has said that the 44 hazardous sites will receive high priority attention as the agency continues its assessment of coal ash impoundment safety. And in her March letter to electric utilities, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said that her agency would propose regulation for the management of coal combustion waste by December 31, 2009.
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Comments
I’d encourage the skeptics over the man-made climate change to think of the sky in Beijing.
The current consumption of dirty, noxious energy reminds me of human smoking habit.
How is the interest of “Public Safety” served by divulging these previously secret locations? Do they not now become easier targets for terorists?
guido… perhaps people might like to KNOW if they are living next door to a toxic dump? I know I sure would – and I’d be moving as far away from it as soon as possible. Not everything is about terrorism (believe it or not) some of it is about personal health. I’d personally like to see the cancer rates for people in these areas…