Don't Drink the Water: Clean Coal's Downside

by: Clem Guttata

Sun Feb 03, 2008 at 09:40:11 AM EST

Don't Drink the Water: Clean Coal's Downside
Coal Ash Dumping Tied to Cancer Clusters

?Merle Wertman, now 62, was diagnosed with Polycythemia Vera five years ago. He had no idea what Polycythemia Vera was. That isn't surprising, considering less than one in 100,000 Americans a year are diagnosed with the extremely rare form of bone marrow cancer, that causes an abnormal increase in blood cells. What is surprising is that Wertman is one of 131 people near his hometown of Tamaqua, Penn., now battling this rare cancer.

In eastern Pennsylvania's Carbon, Luzerne, and Schuylkill counties, that surround the Tamaqua borough, the rate of the rare blood cancer is 4.5 times the national rate, according to data from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a federal public health agency of the Dept. of Health and Human Services. The cancer "cluster" (shown on the map below) follows along Ben Titus Road, next to the Big Gorilla coal combustion waste dump of the Northeastern Power Co. The area is also home to the Superfund sites McAdoo Associates, Air Product & Chemicals Inc., Expert Management Inc. and ICI Americas Inc.

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While multiple environmental factors could well be at play, much evidence points to the waste produced by coal-fired energy plants. "Although the ATSDR did not report a specific link between polycythemia vera and fly ash [a type of coal ash]," said Dante Picciano, a local scientist and environmentalist active on the issue of coal ash dumping, "we believe that the relationship between the two should be at the top of the list for any investigations into the specific cause of the rare cancer."

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According to the Environmental Protection Agency's own research, coal ash dumping can lead to higher rates of cancer, developmental problems in children and adverse effects in women of child-bearing age. Despite the fact that coal ash contains mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium, beryllium, and other toxic metals, the EPA has yet to categorize coal ash as hazardous waste. In addition, coal ash has been found to be up to 100 times more radioactive than nuclear waste, due to the concentrations of uranium and thorium that increase 10-fold after coal is burned.

Okay, so far no big surprise, right? Coal ash is bad stuff. Read the whole article... you won't even be surprised to find out that the Bush-Capito Republican administration has ignored all evidence linking coal ash dumping to health hazards.

Now, here's the really bad part. Do you think "clean coal" technology makes this environmental hazard better or worse?

The solid waste side of coal is being overlooked as environmentalists focus their attention on air pollution and as government agencies and coal companies push "clean" coal technologies. "Cleaner" coal technologies actually produce more toxic coal ash in the resulting solid wase than "dirty" coal technologies, says Jeff Stant of the Clean Air Task Force. These technologies pulverize low-grade fuels in a way that releases fewer pollutants into the air. But those pollutants have to go somewhere, and they end up as ash.

Stant was a contributing author for a recently released report investigating 15 mine disposal sites in Pennsylvania, most of which are dumping sites for ash from Fluidized Bed Combustion (FBC), a "clean" coal technology.

The study, entitled "Impacts on Water Quality from Placement of Coal Combustion Waste in Pennsylvania Coal Mines," found coal ash to be contaminating the groundwater and surface water at levels exceeding federal drinking water standards by 30 to 40 times.

"Clean" FBC plants produce at least five times more coal ash by volume than standard plants do. These plants inject limestone into the burn chamber to capture more emissions and therefore release fewer emissions-thus the misnomer, "clean." But, the limestone leaves behind a burned residual, which ends up in the ash. The bigger problem is that "clean" plants burn more waste-coal than actual coal. Waste-coal consists of the impurities removed from coal in addition to some coal itself, and it contains an ash content that's three times higher than regular coal. Most of the new "clean" coal plants proposed in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and other states will be located next to mines expected to serve as dump sites for coal ash.

The Department of Energy and the coal companies actually promote coal ash disposal as a "clean coal technology." The following methods for disposal are being promoted as "beneficial" uses for the environment: mine-filling, agricultural use, use in cement, incorporation into concrete, and use in wallboards. The DOE and the coal industry say these uses are eco-friendly. They say that dumping in mines-or "mine reclamation" as they call it-will clean up the water draining from mines by lowering its acidity. The opposite is actually true, according to the Pennsylvania study, which found that in two-thirds of the sites, more toxic concentrations known to leach from ash were measured in the water after the ash was dumped in the mines. When used for soil amendment in agricultural use, the toxic metals from the ash can be taken up by plants and, again, leech out of the soil into the groundwater. The toxins in the ash can potentially pose problems in cement and concrete, especially in unmonitored facilities.

"I have never seen levels of lead in a mine pool of that magnitude," says Robert Gadinski, another contributing author of the report. "And that includes lead sites where lead waste is supposed to be dumped. One example-at Marjol Battery in Scranton, Penn., where they dump battery casings and battery waste-even at that site, we never found lead at such high levels."

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The EPA acknowledges that coal ash dumping has contaminated the water at levels exceeding federal drinking water standards in Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The only reason more cases have not been documented is that most dump sites lack monitoring systems to detect contamination, says Lisa Evans, an attorney with the Earth Justice environmental group.

It's time for our politicians advocating for "clean coal"--Democrats and Republicans alike--to be honest about the science behind coal extraction and production technologies. There are no shortcuts for dealing with the dangerous pollutants in coal.

Current "clean coal" technology shuffles where the pollution goes. Instead of sending pollution into the it concentrates it into highly toxic in-ground locations where it contaminates ground water. Meanwhile, when the coal ash is created, moved, and stored it creates a new environmental hazard for everyone nearby.