It’s Time To Disclose What’s Hiding Under Our Lawns
For Decades, Utilities Sold Their Leftovers As A Cheap Substitute For Soil. Now Cancer-Causing Coal Ash Is In Communities & Most People Don't Know About It.
Why aren’t we disclosing what’s potentially poisoning our kids and family members?
That’s a question Susan Wind has been asking for years. You may remember her name as we published an interview with her a few years ago.
The Mom Revolution Is Real & Underway
In today’s episode, Erin and Suzanne talk with Susan Wind, a mom and environmental advocate, who has been bringing attention to public health problems associated with toxic coal ash since her daughter was diagnosed with…
“After I exposed the dirty secret of coal ash being used in lieu of soil to build communities throughout Lake Norman, North Carolina, I remember people were scared and concerned about what their families were up against,” she told TBR. “I asked people all the time, ‘if you knew that your community used coal ash as soil would you have moved here? If you knew that your kids’ high school was sitting next to 48,000 tons of coal ash for more than a decade, would you have moved to that school district?’”
To catch you up, coal ash, also known as coal combustion residuals (CCR), is a toxic byproduct of coal-burning power plants that contains a cocktail of hazardous heavy metals, including chromium- 6, lead, arsenic, mercury, and more.
Susan and her family once lived near Lake Norman next to the Marshall Steam Station, one of the largest power-generating facilities owned by Duke Energy in the Carolinas. The station generates enough energy to power approximately 2 million homes, but not without a price.
The hazardous ash has been used as structural fill beneath homes, playgrounds, and commercial properties throughout North Carolina, and decades-old documents found that Duke Energy asked state leaders for permission to not report sales of toxic coal ash for construction projects.
More than 1 million tons of coal ash was used as a substitute for clean soil between 1996-2010 in Mooresville.
Coal ash exposed near a daycare center in the area was contaminated with radium above health standards and arsenic 18 times above background levels, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. The day care is now working on a playground renovation after an investigation identified coal ash under and around the school, and parents are questioning whether their children’s health issues are related.
In 2015, the Asheville Regional Airport boasted about saving $12 million on renovations thanks to using free coal ash fill.
In a press release at the time Lew Bleiweis, the airport’s executive director, described the mutually beneficial arrangement, “The energy company needed a safe storage solution for their coal combustion byproduct, known as coal ash; and the airport needed fill material suitable for the airfield project. It was a win-win situation.”
After the recent flooding in Asheville, we wonder how all that coal ash is holding up.
North Carolina is not the only state facing this problem. Estimates from the American Coal Ash Association show that almost 190 million tons of the material have been used in fill projects from 1980 to 2019.
In 2022, Georgia Power announced a landmark coal ash project at Plant Bowen near Cartersville, Georgia, where millions of tons of stored ash will be excavated for use in concrete to construct bridges, roads, and buildings in Georgia, and throughout the Southeast
Earlier this year, Alabama Power and Eco Material Technologies announced a plan for millions of tons of coal ash to be harvested from Plant Barry and recycled to make construction materials, like concrete, across the Southeast.
Few states regulate its placement, so coal ash has been placed near drinking water sources and sensitive ecosystems.
In 2023, an EPA report found that coal ash could increase someone’s cancer risk significantly more than previously estimated.
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 revealed 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.
For Susan, the fight has always been personal. Her family moved to The Farms, a wooded neighborhood in Lake Norman in 2012. Her daughter started having health problems in 2015 when she was just 14 and a student at Lake Norman High School. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 16.
Susan eventually learned about 17 other Lake Norman High School students or recent grads that were diagnosed with cancer between 2013 and 2019.
Her friend and tennis partner in the community was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2010 and one of her daughters was also diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2017.
It wasn’t until 2019 that she learned that her former ZIP code had triple the rate of cancer compared to the rest of the state between 2012 and 2016.
But the health department in North Carolina has said that it could not find any peer-reviewed studies linking coal ash to cancer, according to that Wall Street Journal article featuring Susan and her former community.
“Decade after decade, we are constantly being failed by the government when it comes to contamination and corporations,” Susan said. “If you are even lucky (which having cancer or watching a loved one get a cancer diagnosis should not be even in the same sentence as luck), you may have a class action, wait years to get a small payout compared to the attorneys who end up taking most of the settlement, and yet nothing is cleaned up and people continue to die with cancers and illnesses. Nothing changes.”
Susan says at the very least we need to start disclosing that where coal ash is located, just like when you buy a food product and you can read the list of ingredients on the label.
“Just like a pack of cigarettes, the Surgeon General warning states the dangers of smoking tobacco products,” she said. “People should know what they are exposing their families to. If you are buying a home, you should know that the builder used coal ash in the fill. If you are using a product, you should know if there is PFAS in it. These items must be disclosed to the public. We should all have a choice.”
Duke has maintained that coal ash is not a toxic substance and that it “contains substances found in soils and rocks at similar concentrations, with less than 1 percent trace elements such as metals” The company likes to take a “dose-makes-the-poison” approach saying the presence of these elements does not equate to toxicity, but that it’s the exposure and dose that truly matters.
“I would love to ask an employee of Duke Energy or a member of Congress if they would be okay with coal ash in their flowerbeds and in their yards where their pets and kids play,” Susan said. “It’s the same story over and over again—30 years later after the pain and suffering, the EPA or the scientists say ‘I guess that was a bad idea. We did not assess the risks enough.’”
Bobby Jones, founder of Down East Coal Ash Environmental and Social Justice Coalition and a community organizer in the Goldsboro, shares that sentiment.
In a 2021 interview with Sound Rivers, he shared that North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality could do much more to inform potentially impacted communities about toxic issues.
“When it comes to awareness and getting people involved, I’ve not seen anything beyond a formality,” he shared.
Watch this clip of Bobby talking about the low expectation he has for elected officials, as well.
Jones began his work after seeing the negative environmental impacts of coal ash in the water in his community. In 2014, a leak at a discontinued Duke Energy plant released 39,000 tons of coal ash into the nearby Dan River.
The state warned residents against drinking the water while it conducted tests on hundreds of wells close to coal ash ponds. Many residents were forced to drink solely from bottled water for years.
In 2015, Duke Energy pleaded guilty to nine federal criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, four of which were tied directly to the Dan River spill. According to a press release at the time, the company also paid a $68 million criminal fine and agreed to spend $34 million “on environmental projects and land conservation to benefit rivers and wetlands in North Carolina and Virginia.”
It’s a tale as old as time. Pollute, pay the fines, pledge to do better, and repeat.
Selling coal ash to construction companies and developers has allowed utilities to avoid disposal costs for years. It’s corporate greed, plain and simple. People and communities become the guinea pigs. When people get sick and question whether these products are to blame, corporations use their might to diminish and deflect customer concerns.
The EPA needs to do more to regulate the use of coal ash as a substitute for soil and clean fill and investigate where it has been placed.
“This has got to change so people are not blindsided,” Susan said. “I never asked to move to a town that used toxic coal ash to build the town. I never asked for my child to get cancer.”
Keep the conversation going below. Do you think disclosing more toxins can help communities stay safe? Do you think we deserve to know where coal ash is being placed in our communities?
I am the mom in the buried news clip. Thank you for the continued push for awareness into this issue.
been there done that amen & then ....