Living In The Shadow Of A Potential Coal-Ash Disaster

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/coal-ash-little-blue-run_n_1554332.html

Little Blue Run, a massive pond constructed in the 1970s as a dump for the heavy-metal laced remnants of coal burned by power plants. Federal officials consider the site to to be among 45 “high hazard” coal ash impoundments nationwide -- meaning the collapse of the dam holding back slurry and ash would likely cause a loss of human life.

While no one was killed, a massive 2008 spill in Tennessee provided compelling evidence that the dams can fail -- a fact not lost on Bryant and her neighbors.

While industry advocates and environmentalists offer competing claims as to whether storage ponds like Little Blue Run pollute drinking water or foul the air -- or both -- one threat is not up for debate: Dams that hold back coal ash can fail with barely a warning. And yet these ponds -- often unlined and based on decades-old engineering -- remain regulated only by a patchwork of state and local laws.

Little Blue Run, which sits almost directly at the point where Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia meet, is emblematic of the large battle now being waged in Washington over federal regulation of coal ash impoundments. The Environmental Protection Agency wants older, unlined impoundments shut down. Not surprisingly, the coal industry and its supporters, arguing that the engineering behind even the oldest coal ash disposal sites is sound, are fighting furiously to keep them open.