The coal dust settles

Based on this report in today's New York Times, the Tennessee coal ash disaster could repeat itself at hundreds of other locations across America. Apparently, there are over 1,300 of them, mostly unregulated.

What happens to all that coal ash when it does leave those dumps?

In fact, coal ash is used throughout the country for construction fill, mine reclamation and other “beneficial uses.” In 2007, according to a coal industry estimate, 50 tons of fly ash even went to agricultural uses, like improving soil’s ability to hold water, despite a 1999 E.P.A. warning about high levels of arsenic.

That's remarkable. This unregulated, poisonous waste which, among other things, causes cancer and birth defects, is used in the soil that grows our nation's food.

And it's all going on right under our noses - in places like next to the so-called "cleanest coal fired plant in North America" outside of Tampa, just down the highway from here, according to a CBS News story from last year - along with other dumps across the country.

Failing to recognize that there are two faces to every coin, this CBS story from last year entirely missed the issue about where waste products scrubbed from emissions go when they are not pumped into the air. The answer, of course, is into the other waste product produced in removing energy from coal: coal ash. Which eventually means this - the problem, and the poison, is in, among other places, the water we drink, the food we eat. CO2 emissions are not the only issue - they may present the most pressing concern with respect to global climate change, but we ignore the poisons put into our air, our soil, our water, with equal peril for all the living things that call earth home.



The production of coal ash has increased tremendously, not simply as a result of increased energy production (which is a problem in and of itself), but also, ironically, because the pollution controls that keep the poisons out of the air, such as the controls on that plant in Tampa, now deposit the toxic waste into the ash (where the concentrations of that poison are even greater than before).

That's today's clean coal technology. That's the hidden cost when McCain-Palin campaign advertisements chaged accusingly that "Obama, Biden and their liberal allies oppose clean coal." That's what happens when you separate rhetoric from thought, when we just argue sides rather than argue facts. Go ahead, drill, baby, drill. Mine, baby, mine. It's all good, right?

Keep that in mind, for instance, when you look at plug-in hybrids as an environmental solution. (On that front, last week reports appeared claiming that Toyota is developing a solar-powered hybrid - alas, those stories don't appear to be true. The answer to me still appears to be a plug-in hybrid powered off a solar grid, preferably the panels on the roof of your home.)