The U.S. EPA is working on new rules for the disposal of coal fly ash, which is the stuff left over when coal is burned at power plants. And not a moment too soon! For the past few weeks attention has been focused on British Petroleum’s devastating oil spill, but it wasn’t too long ago that a manmade lake holding 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash slurry gave way in Tennessee and released a flood of coal ash that smashed through 300 acres of rural neighborhoods and into the Emory River.
Cleanup for the Tennessee disaster alone is estimated to total about $1.2 billion over the next few years and with about 900 other coal ash landfills and liquid impoundments peppered across the U.S., that’s a lot of expensive accidents waiting to happen. The race is on for EPA to establish some kind of order in what has been a regulatory free-for-all.