It's hard to believe it's been two years since the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal ash pond breached its earthen dam and filled an adjacent river with toxic sludge. What's not difficult to believe, but still sad, is our government's failure to respond.
To mark the coal ash spill's second anniversary, here are snippets from two articles that wonder why the EPA hasn't kept its promise to regulate coal ash.
From Facing South and the Institute for Southern Studies:
The disaster also pushed the issue of coal ash regulation into the public policy spotlight, with incoming Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson vowing to replace the existing patchwork of weak state regulations with federal rules to prevent a similar disaster in the future.But on the second anniversary of the Kingston spill, the American public is still waiting for federal protections from the hazards of coal ash -- with no idea when those might be in place.
This week the EPA released its upcoming regulatory agenda, which addresses the final rulemaking for coal ash. The agenda classes the coal ash rule as a "long-term action," with the date of the final release "to be determined."
"We are two years out from this environmental disaster with no certainty on when the final rules will be published," said Lisa Evans, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice. "We don't think this is a good place to be."
... one look at the gray gunk made it clear that this was no ordinary mudslide. McCoin found snapped telephone poles and grim-faced neighbors in the wake of what was later described as a "tidal wave" of slurry. It was enough liquid to fill 1,666 Olympic-size swimming pools. They finally finished dredging ash from the bottom of the river in early December, almost two years after the spill. While residents were first told it would take four weeks to clean up, the estimates now are more like four years. The catastrophe is expected to cost the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) up to $1.2 billion, though environmental economists have said the true cost for all the damagethe pollution in the river and the human health problems caused by dumping a billion gallons of toxic sludge into backyardsis likely more than $4 billion.Most of McCoin's neighbors who were displaced by the spill have settled with the TVA and moved on. McCoin's farm is just beyond the boundary between homes that the TVA has bought, and she's not looking to move, anyway, she says. She and others downstream from the spill have filed a number of lawsuits, seeking compensation for the environmental and health hazards of living in an area contaminated with coal ash, which according to studies comes with a cancer risk nine times greater than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Just last week there was news of a leak at another containment pond on the sitewhich the TVA says was just a "small" trickle of rainwater. "I'm not buying it," says McCoin.
Which leads, of course, to the bigger questionwhy are utilities still allowed to dump the waste in these pits? In the wake of the TVA spill, EPA Administrator Lisa Jacksonwho wasn't yet even sworn in at the timepledged to revisit the question of regulating coal combustion waste. In the months after, EPA identified 431 containment units for coal slurry at 162 sites around the country and has labeled 49 of them "high hazard"meaning they pose a risk to human health and the environment.
The EPA's decision to regulate coal ash will impact the Charlotte area, since there are at least four unlined, high-hazard coal ash ponds on the Catawba River the same river we get our drinking water from, and they're all owned by Duke Energy, which got its start on that river's shores and is still headquartered here.
There's no telling when the agency will finalize their decision, despite their public hearings where every speaker who doesn't get a pay check from a coal ash-related company lobbied for a hazardous waste classification.
Not sure why you should care about coal ash regulation? Watch this:
Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.