Coal's other dark side: Toxic ash that can poison water and people

On December 22, ten years to the day after a dike ruptured at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant near Kingston, Tennessee, pouring more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash into the Emory River, TVA took out a full-page ad in the local paper to congratulate itself and its contractors on a cleanup job well done. That same day, about 150 of the workers who actually cleaned up the spill gathered at the site, which is now a park with hiking trails, boat ramp, and ball fields. Standing in blue jeans and work boots near a homemade wooden cross, they commemorated a different aspect of the cleanup: their 36 coworkers who’ve died from brain cancer, lung cancer, leukemia, and other diseases.

Some of the survivors walked with canes. Most bore blisters from the arsenic buried in their skin. Nearly all carried inhalers in their pockets. TVA's ad did not mention them.

More than 200 cleanup workers and family members are now suing TVA's main contractor, Jacobs Engineering, for refusing to provide them with protective equipment and for causing their debilitating and in some cases deadly diseases. Last November they won the first phase of the trial: A federal jury agreed that Jacobs had failed to protect them and that exposure to coal ash could have caused their illnesses.

While the world focuses on coal's carbon-dioxide emissions, which are a leading driver of climate change, the Kingston spill and its aftermath highlight a far more immediate problem: What to do with the millions of tons of coal ash piled up in 1,400 unlined landfills and ponds around the U.S. Most of those dumps lie near lakes or rivers or above freshwater aquifers that supply drinking water to nearby communities.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/02/coal-other-dark-side-toxic-ash/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=Science_20190227::rid=594148660