South-Carolina
Toxic Coal Ash in South Carolina: Addressing Coal Plants’ Hazardous Legacy
Coal ash comprises hazardous pollution together with arsenic, boron, cobalt, chromium, lead, lithium, mercury, molybdenum, radium, selenium, and different heavy metals, which have been linked to most cancers, coronary heart and thyroid illness, reproductive failure, and neurological hurt.
Business’s personal knowledge point out that throughout the nation 91% of coal crops are at the moment polluting groundwater above federal well being requirements with poisonous pollution.
Coal ash stays certainly one of our nation’s largest poisonous industrial waste streams. U.S. coal crops proceed to supply roughly 70 million tons yearly.
Regardless of EPA’s 2015 Coal Ash Rule, which created the first-ever safeguards for coal ash disposal, many coal ash dumps stay unregulated because of sweeping exemptions for legacy coal ash ponds and inactive landfills.
The exempted coal ash dumps are sited disproportionately in low-income communities and communities of coloration. The EPA will concern a proposed rule to deal with these exemptions in Could 2023.