What's Worse than Smoking 10 Packs A Day? Living Near a Coal Ash Dump

A mother would be considered crazy if she let her toddler smoke one pack of cigarettes a day, let alone ten packs.

But, given the choice, that child might be better off chain smoking than living, drinking and breathing in his or her own neighborhood—if that neighborhood happens to be near a toxic coal ash site.  People who live near these sludge storage ponds have a 1 in 50 risk of cancer, which is the equivalent of lighting up through 10 packs a day.

Smokers leave a trail of ash, and so do our nation's coal-fired power plants. And just as a smoker's refuse travels from ash tray to trash can to municipal landfill, Big Coal's waste follows a similar pattern on a much grander scale: Its 150 million tons of ash waste a year often winds up in unsafe sludge storage pools, which threaten drinking water supplies and ecosystems at thousands of sites nationwide.

Except it's actually worse than that. "It's important to know that coal ash ponds and landfills are currently less consistently regulated than landfills accepting household trash," Amy Galland of a California non-profit As You Sow told the San Francisco Chronicle.

There's one more parallel between smoking and coal burning. For decades, tobacco companies infamously pretended that cigarettes were safe, or even that they were good for you.

Today, Big Coal is using the same tactic. Even though coal ash contains arsenic, lead and mercury and plenty of other carcinogenic-compounds in unsafe storage sites, the industry has fought tooth-and-nail against a potential "hazardous waste" designation, which would bring stricter federal regulation of disposal and protect communities around the country. Big Coal argues the waste isn't that dangerous and so regulation should be left up to states. In some cases, Big Coal even says that coal ash is good for you!

The debate over the new regulations arises out of the catastrophic failure of a coal ash storage pond in Kingston, Tennessee in 2008. Though it was an unrivaled environmental disaster, you'd be forgiven if the details are a big fuzzy, what with the oil spills, mine disasters and gas well explosions that have occurred in the interim. When EPA recently held a public hearing there on its proposed regulations, residents came out to push for the strongest restrictions on coal ash disposal. The town is still in the midst of a $1.2 billion cleanup of the town and the river.

All around the country, people who live under the shadow of the coal ash cloud are speaking out. Oklahoma. Mississippi. New Mexico.Pennsylvania.

This week, the Sierra Club opened a hotline—1-888-314-7450— to help resident report suspected coal ash contamination and spills. There is one week left to comment on EPA's proposed coal ash regulations. The agency is deciding between 2 choices—one is weakened to pander to the coal industry, and the other would make coal ash a regulated hazardous waste. Tell Administrator Lisa Jackson which one you support.

Photo credit: Public Domain Photos via Flickr

Follow Change.org's Environment page on Facebook and Twitter.