It’s In the Water – Growing Evidence of Widespread Community Contamination from Coal Combustion Waste

Last week, it was reported that dozens of residents near Duke Energy coal ash dumps in Raleigh, North Carolina were advised by public health officials not to drink or cook with their water after testing revealed that the water was contaminated with toxic heavy metals from coal combustion waste. In fact, testing revealed that 87 private wells near eight, coal-fired power plants were contaminated with heavy metals at levels that exceeded state groundwater standards.  Among the excess metals found in the residential water were known neurotoxins and carcinogens, including mercury, lead and arsenic that are present in the byproduct waste from burning coal to produce electrical energy. One toxin, vanadium, was detected at levels some 86 times above the state groundwater standard.

This most recent revelation adds to the growing body of scientific evidence that demonstrates a serious public health risk to residents living in the large shadow of coal fired power plants.  A 2010 investigation  led by expert hydrogeologists identified 137 coal combustion waste (CCW) disposal sites in 34 states that have contaminated groundwater or surface water with toxic metals and other pollutants.  More recently, the EPA reported multiple contaminants at 116 coal ash disposal units at 49 plants that exceed federal or state standards for numerous toxic metals, including arsenic (a potent carcinogen); manganese (a metal that can damage the nervous system in high concentrations); boron (a pollutant that can cause damage to the stomach, intestines, liver, kidney, and brain when ingested in large amounts); selenium (a toxic pollutant that causes adverse health effects at high exposures) and cadmium (a toxic pollutant that can damage the kidneys, lungs, and bones).

Sadly, for those of us living in the Ohio Valley, these types of risks are all too real. In West Virginia, groundwater poisoning from heavy metals found in coal waste has been reported in association with the Mitchell Plant, Albright Power Station, the Kanawha River Plant, John Amos Plant, the Mount Storm Power Station, Mountaineer Plant and Phillip Sporn, among others.  In Ohio, similar groundwater contamination has been documented near the General James M. Gavin plant, the Walter C. Beckjord Station, Muskingum River Plant, Conesville Landfill and the Cardinal Plant, among others.  And keep in mind, that these are merely the sites that have been investigated.  States do not generally require off-site monitoring of drinking water wells beyond the fence line, even when there is documented contamination at the property boundary, so it is likely that the problem is even more widespread than is being reported. Furthermore, these contaminated coal combustion waste sites cannot simply be dismissed as a legacy of past practices that are no longer allowed today. Almost all of the facilities described in these studies are active coal combustion waste disposal sites, and the contamination is documented by recent data from 2007 or later.

Power companies that own or operate coal ash disposal sites that contaminate groundwater should be required to clean them up, but rarely do states require the power company to stop the poisoning, let alone remediate the damage they’ve already done. Instead, state agencies routinely accept dubious claims by utilities that contamination results are due to sampling anomalies, or that “nature” is responsible for heavy metal concentrations that are far above background levels, and so they let operators return to reduced monitoring or stop monitoring altogether. And In the meantime, power companies sometimes quietly purchase surrounding property where wells are contaminated, often without alerting the state or the community that a danger exists.  But that does not mean that you have no voice or no options to make sure you and your family have safe, clean drinking water.  If you believe your water has been poisoned as a result of coal fired power operations near your home, I would urge you to contact an experienced attorney who can help you to restore purity to your drinking water and make these polluters clean up their mess before it’s too late.