Some seriously nasty toxins, including arsenic, chromium, mercury, and lead, can be found in coal ash, the highly toxic leftover of burning coal for energy. But even in the wake of 2008’s catastrophic failure of a Tennessee storage pond, which released an ash-laden flood in the path of hundreds of homes, U.S. EPA is still seriously debating whether to put in stricter regulations.
Currently, the agency is accepting public comments on whether or not it should finally regulate coal ash as the hazardous substance that it obviously is. (Sign our petition to tell EPA that coal ash is hazardous.) But before it could do that, EPA had to quit promoting a permissive coal ash recycling program, which a hazardous designation could in part end.
Earlier this month, the EPA took down a web page an industry partnership program that promoted the reuse of coal ash in products ranging from consumer goods and building materials to soil treatments for farms. On the one hand, recycling makes sense: Coal ash is the nation’s second largest waste stream (right behind the waste generated by coal mining itself, actually.) If we have to do something with all that waste then some of the recycling options, for instance as a replacement for cement in concrete, are good ways to safely lock away the toxins.
On the other hand, many other reuses make no sense whatsoever and can lead to severe health and environmental problems. Ash, for example, is being used in drywall in people’s homes, for example, and as fill dirt in construction projects, where it can contaminate groundwater.
