The Environmental Integrity Project released a report today detailing what it calls the 50 "Worst Polluters" among facilities that store coal ash in surface impoundments.
The report, which can be found here, details the amounts of arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium, and thallium these coal-burning plants dumped between 2000 and 2006.
Highlights:
Kingston appears in five of the six top 50 lists. It did not, however, report dumping thallium, even though thallium has been found at the site after the spill, leading EIP director Eric Schaeffer to stipulate that TVA has neglected to report the presence of the toxic heavy metal.
Here's where Kingston ranked otherwise.
Arsenic: No. 20, 312,000 pounds
No. 1: The Stanton Energy Center, Orlando, Fla. with more than 3.5 million pounds.
Chromium: No. 16, 583,000 pounds
No. 1: The J.M. Stuart Station, Manchester, Ohio, with 1.5 million pounds
Lead: No. 21, 331,000 pounds
No. 1: Stanton Energy, Orlando, 1.3 million pounds
Nickel: No. 20, 495,000 pounds
No. 1: Stanton, Orlando, 12.3 million pounds
Selenium: No. 15, 45,000 pounds
No. 1: The Pennsylvania Power Company's Bruce Mansfield Plant in Shippingport, Penn., 167,494 pounds
"This does point to a really inexcusable lack of regulation of this type of disposal," said Schaeffer today in a teleconference, calling on the EPA to tighten regulations on coal ash and coal ash disposal. He added that unlined ash storage presents two potential risks, one being the kind of disaster we've seen at Kingston. The other more insidious.
"You can also have a slow poisoning," of the surrounding ecosystem, he said. "We think that's already happening."
How did it get to this?
"In 2000, the EPA decided that coal ash must be regulated," said Lisa Evans, an attorney for Earth Justice. "Yet today, almost nine years later, the Bush EPA has made almost no progress toward regulating coal ash."
Evans pointed out that all the data in the report came from the EPA's own Toxics Release Inventory.
"It's obvious from the data we're presenting today that the EPA has ignored its own voluminous data on coal ash," she said. "This all adds up to a gaping hole through which this toxic ash can roar, as we've seen here."
Evans said that there is "a potential disaster in every state where coal ash is burned."
"The tragedy in Tennessee tells a story that an industry without regulation can run amok."
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