EPA Admits: Oops, Coal Ash Is More Toxic & Carcinogenic Than We Thought.
That's A Big Problem For Communities Across The Country Where Ash Leaches Hazardous Chemicals Into The Local Environment.
“I wish I wasn’t the only one left living to make this testimony,” said Vickie Simmons, a member of the Moapa Band of Paiutes in southern Nevada back in June 2023 at a U.S. EPA public hearing on coal ash. “I’m getting old, but still I’m coming because we need that plant cleaned up. Where was the EPA then, and where is the EPA now?”
For decades, the Tribe has endured severe coal ash pollution from the second most-contaminated coal ash site in the U.S., at the former Reid Gardner power plant. Their homes were located less than one fourth of a mile from the once-operating smoke stacks and within 500 feet from the plant’s evaporation ponds. Vickie’s brother died when he was just 31.
Coal ash, also called coal combustion residuals (CCR), is the toxic, carcinogenic waste product left behind when power plants burn coal for energy. It contains everything from arsenic and radium to lead, mercury and other heavy metals.
A November 2023 EPA report found that coal ash could increase someone’s cancer risk significantly more than previously estimated. I would say that’s a pretty big “oops.”
“EPA also found greater potential for risk from gamma radiation as CCR comes to be located closer to the ground surface due to a reduction in shielding,” the EPA wrote in the assessment. “An additional sensitivity analysis identified potential for further risk if CCR becomes mixed with surface soil. Accumulation of CCR can result in elevated cancer risk from incidental ingestion of arsenic and radium, in addition to direct exposure to gamma radiation from radium.”
Coal-fired power plants throughout the U.S. continue to generate more than 70 million tons of coal ash waste each year, making it one of our nation’s largest toxic industrial waste streams, according to according to Poisonous Coverup, an Environmental Integrity Project/Earthjustice report. That same report reveals that despite federal rules enacted to remediate these sites, very few of the nation’s almost 300 coal plants have done so or have any plans for clean up.
This dangerous waste isn’t just sitting around in a landfills or disposal ponds, it’s also been used as a cheap source of fill material on construction projects. CCR has been used for roads, parking lots, bridges, airfields, and buildings.
The American Coal Ash Association estimates that up to 180 million tons of the material has been used in fill projects throughout the U.S. since 1980. A few examples include a golf course in Virginia to playgrounds in Tennessee and much of an entire Indiana town.
This new EPA assessment raises serious questions about the safety of coal ash used as structural fill.
“The agency found that even low levels of arsenic and gamma radiation, which are present in CCRs, drive an increased cancer risk,” writes environmental reporter Lisa Sorg for NC Newsline. “Although the EPA limited its scope of the risk assessment to fill used on land at electric power plants, its conclusions can be applied to similar sites elsewhere.”
The availability and low cost of coal ash made it attractive to developers and landowners, especially during the ‘80s and ‘90s, according to North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality’s website. The state is one of few that has attempted to track where ash was used as structural fill. At least 72 structural fill sites are in North Carolina, and some of them with exposed ash.
Water Problems
About 91 percent of U.S. coal plants cause unsafe levels of groundwater contamination, according to the 2022 report Poisonous Coverup. Most coal plants are contaminating groundwater with unsafe levels of arsenic, which is known to cause multiple types of cancer and to impair the brains of developing children.
Residents of La Belle, Pennsylvania, have sued three companies that maintain a coal ash dump in their town. The site surrounds the State Correctional Institution Fayette, where many inmates have developed respiratory illnesses, gastrointestinal tract problems, thyroid disorders, and cancers.
From 2004 to 2012, more than 2 million tons of coal ash from the AES Guayama Power Plant were used as fill in dozens of construction projects in southeastern Puerto Rico, including housing, hospital, and road projects. Most of these sites are located directly above the South Coast Aquifer near the public supply water wells, and in some cases ash was placed directly in the aquifer.
“This is a national problem,” said Dean Naujoks at the public hearing in 2023. He is a Potomac Riverkeeper, working to protect the public’s right to clean water in the Potomac River. “We got coal ash everywhere.”
“Unless groups like ours come in and enforce the issue and work with citizens and use the Clean Water Act for enforcement, we're not getting the type of cleanup that we should be seeing,” he continued. “I’ve worked on coal ash in three states. And I keep seeing the same problems.”
Susan Wind’s teenage daughter was diagnosed with cancer when her family lived in Mooresville, North Carolina. Coal ash had been used for years in that town as fill for roads and commercial developments. Dozens of other teenagers in the area have been diagnosed with cancer.
“Try imagine moving your family to a town (to raise your kids) and learning that the area used coal ash to build it (not safe soil),” she said at the hearing last year. “I was dismissed by politicians when trying to address this issue. It was an inconvenience to them. They all used this line to fall back on: ‘The EPA says coal ash is non-hazardous. Therefore it is safe.’”
Watch more testimonies from those impacted by coal ash below:
After years of litigation and grassroots activism, the EPA is working (slowly) to fill dangerous gaps in the 2015 Coal Ash Rule. Those gaps left half of U.S. coal ash unregulated and without clean-up requirements.
More than 150 public interest groups sent a letter to the EPA last December, urging the agency to take steps to protect the public from risks after the EPA’s own assessment found unacceptable cancer and non-cancer risks from exposure to arsenic and radioactivity from coal ash fill.
“EPA’s current regulation of coal ash fill is grossly inadequate,” they wrote.
The advocacy groups called for the EPA to quantify the full range of health risks, from radiation in particular, investigate where ash was placed near residential areas and require clean up, craft a rule that prohibits the use of ash as structural fill, and issue a public advisory recommending an immediate halt to use of ash as fill in residential areas. The letter notes that EPA found cancer risks even when small amounts of ash (1 to 2 percent of the soil mix) are used.
The information is out there. There’s no more time for excuses. The EPA needs to do its job and regulate this dangerous byproduct to protect communities across the country.
You can learn more about learn more about the agency’s proposed changes for CCR here.
We want to hear from you! Sound off in the comments below on what you think about coal ash and the EPA’s latest assessment.
This makes me sick to my stomach. It is always about money and until people start dying of cancer and fighting like hell, the EPA and large corporations stick their heads into the sand. There is no end to this shit. It takes whole communities fighting together before anyone will start listening.
As shameful as the behavior of the EPA is, we need to remember that it as an agency is severely constrained by the will of both the Executive branch and Congress, and has recently had at least two of its proposed actions slapped down by the Supreme Court.
We the electorate as a whole share much of the responsibility for this through our prioritization of other things over the environment and the climate in our selection of and communication with our elected representatives. Until we start electing people at all levels who are both knowledgeable and committed, nothing is going to change.
BTW things might get measurably worse in the immediate future, should the SCOTUS agree with Koch Industries on the case regarding the Chevron criterion.