Spilled coal ash carries poisons-Arsenic levels are 149 times the limit for drinking water

[spanone]

The massive coal ash spill in East Tennessee is laced with unhealthy amounts of arsenic, antimony, lead and a brew of other toxic materials and heavy metals, tests show.

The Environmental Protection Agency has released results from the first round of tests on the sludge that spilled across 300 acres of Roane County on Dec. 22. The ash that burst out of a retaining pit at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired plant spilled five decades' worth of coal dust and chemicals into homes, yards and the local ecosystem.

At one point in the Emory River, just downriver from the disaster site, arsenic levels in the water registered 149 times higher than the federal limit for safe drinking water. The same spot registered lead levels five times higher than normal, as well as unsafe levels of antimony, beryllium, cadmium and chromium, and elevated levels of a dozen other chemicals.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090103/NEWS01/901030357

[.... callchet ....]

1. I grew

up in a coal mining town . There were two creeks that went through the town and joined just past the town and flowed into the Ohio River. One was black and the other was red. The black one carried water from the coal washing facility. And it was pure deep black. and there was black quicksand like sludge all through the creek. The other creek was red with run off from the sulfur from abandoned mines. Absolutely no life in either one. There was no garbage collection. You just took your garbage and threw it in the creek. There are a lot of sites like the one you described all over Appalachia just waiting to bust loose.

[spanone]

2. criminal

[Buzz Clik]

3. Managing coal ash is really nothing new. What you described in your area was illegal.

The mess in Tennessee will eventually lead to better construction guidelines for retention of ash.

Coal is critical in our lives. It isn't going away. We must, however, hold the feet of those responsible to the fire.

[ensho]

6. we can live without coal

nt

[Buzz Clik]

7. Sure. We can live without air and water for a while, too.

But, you'll need a reasonable alternative or you'll need to brace for a shocking change in lifestyle.

[Buzz Clik]

4. Yeah, that's bad. Gratefully, it's temporary.

[juno jones]

5. And to think

there are DU'ers out there cavalierly saying that there ain't no poison and they'd freely drink the native waters of that coal washed municipality any day of the week just to prove it's all in our conspiracy-tainted paranoid minds.

[Buzz Clik]

8. Really? Somebody said that?

I'd really like to read something that stupid. Link?

[spanone]

9. this is the real story....it all goes back to bu$hco

"Empty Promise": The Broken Federal Commitment Behind the Tennessee Coal Ash Disaster
Friday 26 December 2008

In Harriman, Tenn., flooding from fly ash sludge on Monday after a storage pond wall broke. (Photo: J. Miles Carey / Knoxville News Sentinel / AP)

When Earthjustice Attorney Lisa Evans testified earlier this year before a congressional committee about the looming threat from coal combustion waste, she warned that the federal government's broken pledge to regulate disposal of the potentially dangerous material threatened the health and safety of communities across the country.

Speaking before a June 10 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources titled "How Should the Federal Government Address the Health and Environmental Risks of Coal Combustion Waste?," Evans pointed out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in its Regulatory Determination on Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels published in 2000 that federal standards for disposal of coal combustion waste were needed to protect public health and the environment.

The federal failure to regulate the waste has put 23 states - including Tennessee - in a special bind, since their statutes have "no more stringent" provisions prohibiting them from enacting standards stricter than those found in federal law. Without federal action, those states can't regulate coal combustion waste disposal beyond the few obviously inadequate safeguards that now exist.

Yet the U.S. government's commitment to regulate the very real danger of coal combustion waste - the nation's second-largest industrial waste stream with 129 million tons produced each year - remains "an entirely empty promise," Evans testified.

http://www.truthout.org/122708Y