COAL ASH - Round 2

8 February 2010

You probably don’t give too much thought to coal ash.

You might want to change that.

The USA gets half its electricity from coal, produced by about 600 power plants , each of which produces about 325,000 tons of coal combustion waste (CCW), composed of fly ash, bottom ash, and scrubber slurry. This is nasty stuff. Industry tells us that it’s not very harmful, but then you read the articles about the horrible birth defects and environmental consequences to the third world locations, unlucky enough to have a couple of shiploads dumped on them.

CCW contains a slew of nasties like arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium, which tend to blow around and leach out into the water table (oops, don’t drink that!)

Thank God the EPA hasn’t recognized it for the toxic waste that it is, because the coal burners would have to treat it as such, which would be expensive {shudders.}

Did I mention that since the stuff is so ubiquitous, and after all, non-toxic, that we are mixing it in with wall board and concrete. A little mercury in your sheet rock shouldn’t bother you, right?

Last year, the EPA released a list of coal ash storage sites that would pose a grave danger to the public if they failed (like the one in Tennessee did last Christmas, largest industrial disaster in US history!) Didn’t hear about it?

I’ve been dying to shoot the “EPA 44” since the list was released. Got them all plugged in to my GPS.

Rumor has it that the Obama crew will review the regulations this week, and my sources tell me there are no great pictures that tell the story graphically. Sounds like a bugle call to me, better call in the cavalry: SouthWings. Twelve of the EPA list are in NC, the SW stomping ground.

SouthWings has been my partner on the Coal Ash project for years, and they jumped right on board to go again. The weather looks good for the target region for today, so... all systems go!

Tough it’s a bit short notice, the spontaneity allows me to have pretty favorable odds with the weather. Could work.

You can see the first set of pictures from the Coal Ash project here.

STATE OF THE UNION

It’s hard not to love Obama. He’s handsome, smart, thoughtful, and seems to say the right things. And that smile when he’s waiting for the audience to get his joke is so cute.

But, when one listens to what is said (on the environment, anyway), shock should be the reaction. As a solution to our energy needs, he advocates: offshore drilling, “clean” coal, untapped natural gas deposits and nuclear. Those same words emanated from the mouth of his predecessor and we hated it. Offshore drilling will quickly despoil those marine habitats, overwhelming the already threatened fish populations. And of course more oil spills will be the norm. Clean coal doesn’t exist when one examines the life-cycle of the fuel, period. Carbon capture and sequestration don’t exist at present, and tests indicate that they will consume 25% of the energy produced by the fuel they're supposed to clean. And who’s to say that the carbon will stay buried in the old mine shafts they want to use for the purpose? Nothing else does.


"Untapped natural gas" means deposits like the Marcellus Shale formation, the extraction of which has been an environmental disaster from the first drilling. And nuclear, even if we could do it without the releases and accidents, is highly dangerous to plant neighbors. The answer is ruthless conservation and low-impact technologies. Now.

His appeal to bipartisanism is well and good, but government won’t do squat unless we, the people demand it. Stick your head out the window and shout it.