And here’s why:

Toxic coal and oil ash waste sites contaminate ground water and wells. The potential impacts associated with these sites are so dangerous that the U.S. government believes certain high hazard sites are a security threat. Furthermore, Politico recently reported that Barbara Boxer was “muzzled” by the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the location of certain coal ash sites. From Politico:

Coal ash — a byproduct of burning coal — is full of highly toxic chemicals that can cause birth defects, cancer and other health problems. The toxins can also infiltrate water supplies and destroy fish, bird and other animal populations around the dumps. Some studies have found coal ash to be more radioactive than nuclear waste. But the real danger comes from spills: Last December, a coal ash spill sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres in East Tennessee.

The EPA has identified 44 “high hazard” sites, but the DHS says that revealing their locations could be a security hazard. The agency wouldn’t detail their security concerns, said Boxer, but forbid her from discussing the sites with anyone other than senators from the affected states. No aides, except for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee staff, can be informed.

Image via The New York Times

Fly ash piling up: The map below shows areas in the United States where fly-ash contamination has resulted in environmental damage.

Image via The Virginian-Pilot

The image below shows before and after satellite images of the December 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill. The blog, Earth Impact News, provides an interesting analogy:

The BEFORE image was taken just a month before the earthen wall of a containment pond at Tennessee’s Kingston Fossil Plant failed. The AFTER image was shot on the day of the disaster. Sort of reminds me of a virus-ridden cell that bursts open, releasing nasty phages.

Image via NASA’s Earth Observatory and Discovery News: Earth Impacts News

Below is an aerial image taken one day after the coal ash spill. Vast quantities of fly ash material contaminated the environment and private property. From Wikipedia:

The TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill occurred just before 1 a.m. on Monday December 22, 2008, when an ash dike ruptured at an 84-acre (0.34 km²) solid waste containment area at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, USA. 1.1 billion gallons (4.2 million m³) of coal fly ash slurry was released.

Image via the Tennessee Valley Authority

This iconic image below from the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill illustrates the consequences of reliance on dirty energy. Coal-fired power plants also damage the environment and impact human health far from the actual power plant site. From EcoWorldly:

World wide, 75 percent of human exposure to mercury is from the consumption of marine fish and shell fish. In the U.S., about 40 percent of all human exposure to mercury is from tuna harvested in the Pacific Ocean, according to Elsie Sunderland, a coauthor of the recent US Geologic Survey study.

.       .       .

The data analysis results of water samples taken at 16 different sites (and at different depths) along the Eastern Pacific Ocean (from Hawaii to Alaska) indicate a significant increase (“bioaccumulation”) of a compound known as methylmercury (CH3Hg) which is far more toxic than mercury (Hg) alone. This increase occurs primarily between 200 and 700 meters below the surface, where, not coincidentally, the availability of dissolved oxygen (O2) drops off. This is because at that depth, naturally occurring bacteria proliferate as they decompose the “ocean rain” of dead, sinking algae, and use up a good deal of the O2 in the process. The Hg absorbed by the dead algae now combines chemically with a plentiful by-product of decomposition: methyl (CH3) molecules. These readily combine with mercury, forming MethylMercury. MethylMercury then works its way up the food chain (small invertebrates eat dead algae, they get eaten, etc) to larger fish, such as the Pacific Blue Fin tuna, which ends up in our sandwiches and sushi.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, it has been estimated that our air, water and soil have experienced a threefold increase in Mercury levels. Mercury, a soft, liquid-like, silverish metal (once known as “quick silver”) is toxic—especially to nerve cells–and becomes more dangerous when combined with methyl molecules, which are simple but ubiquitous organic compounds involved in a great number of biological/cellular processes (including gene silencing.). These molecules rapidly accumulate in organic tissue and can cause a variety of health problems.

Image by J. Miles Carey/Knoxville News Sentinel, via The New York Times

The immoral and egregious practice of mountaintop removal certainly shocks my conscious. Long overdue but welcoming still, the Obama Administration is promising to do more about mountaintop mining. From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Individual reviews will replace more general nationwide permits that had often meant less rigorous environmental study of coal mining operations, officials said.

.       .       .

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ practice of issuing blanket permits to coal mining companies was blocked in parts of West Virginia by a federal judge in March.

.       .       .

[O]fficials struggled to describe what practical differences in mountaintop mining would result from the policy changes. When asked, for example, whether there would be fewer or smaller strip mines in the mountains, Bob Sussman, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency senior policy adviser, said the EPA under the Obama administration would be more diligent in exercising its responsibilities.

“Our administrator (Lisa Jackson) is committed to having a thorough, rigorous and transparent review of all these permits,” he said.

The Corps and the EPA, which at times have seemed at odds on mining policy since the Obama administration took power in January, pledged to work through a backlog of 110 permits to allow dumping waste rock in streams.

Image found here

The waste from burning coal is “more radioactive than nuclear waste.” However, a 1997 study by the U.S. Geological Survey determined, “Radioactive elements in coal and fly ash should not be sources of alarm, [since] the vast majority of coal and the majority of fly ash are not significantly enriched in radioactive elements, or in associated radioactivity, compared to common soils or rocks.” Still, the potential risks are unsettling. From Scientific American:

Coal, meanwhile, is believed responsible for a host of more quotidian problems, such as mining accidents, acid rain and greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn’t supposed to spawn three-eyed fish like Blinky.

Over the past few decades, however, a series of studies has called these stereotypes into question. Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy. * [See Editor's Note at end of page 2]

At issue is coal’s content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or “whole,” coal that they aren’t a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a “stack shadow”—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant’s smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

In a 1978 paper for Science, J. P. McBride at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and his colleagues looked at the uranium and thorium content of fly ash from coal-fired power plants in Tennessee and Alabama. To answer the question of just how harmful leaching could be, the scientists estimated radiation exposure around the coal plants and compared it with exposure levels around boiling-water reactor and pressurized-water nuclear power plants.

The result: estimated radiation doses ingested by people living near the coal plants were equal to or higher than doses for people living around the nuclear facilities. At one extreme, the scientists estimated fly ash radiation in individuals’ bones at around 18 millirems (thousandths of a rem, a unit for measuring doses of ionizing radiation) a year. Doses for the two nuclear plants, by contrast, ranged from between three and six millirems for the same period. And when all food was grown in the area, radiation doses were 50 to 200 percent higher around the coal plants.

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