I have blogged about so-called "clean coal" many times before. It still isn't any cleaner and never will be. A study by the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club, and Earth Justice has released a report that found that at 39 sites in 21 states where coal fired power plants were dumping coal ash they were polluting the ground water with toxic metals such as arsenic and lead. The report brings the number of polluted sites to 137 in 34 states.Power companies dump the ash in holding ponds. Others stockpile it on dry land where when it dries it turns into a very fine dust that blows into the air. It is equally toxic to breathe as to drink. We saw in Kingston, Tennessee, what can happen when the reservoirs into which it is dumped fail.

This report comes at a time when the EPA is holding hearings to determine for the first time ever if the federal government should regulate the storage and disposal of coal ash. The companies want the states to regulate them. This would amount to another unfunded mandate. States are by and large bankrupt so we know how that will work. The pollution is happening in 34 states, or in any state that has coal fired generating plants. It is a national problem that begs for a national solution.

If you believe the coal industries, coal can be cleaned up and the waste spewing out of the smoke stack rendered harmless. I have a bridge to nowhere I'd like to sell you if you buy that one. If you watched 60 Minutes on Sunday, October 4th you will never buy their propaganda again. In Running on Empty, in Chapter 15, I talked about the exact same environmental disaster that happened in Kingston, Tennessee. On December 22, 2008, a billion gallons of a soup made up of fly ash was dumped on the countryside and into a nearby river leaving a mess 100 times worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster. Some 45 homes were either destroyed or made uninhabitable. Even those homes along the river that were not actually touched by the sludge were made unfit to live in...

According to an article in the Arizona Daily Star, August 6, 2009, Nissan plans to build recharging stations along Interstate Highway 10 between Tucson and Phoenix and introduce up to 1,000 Nissan Leaf electric vehicles in the Phoenix and Tucson market area. The Leaf is Nissan’s latest generation of the Prius and is 100 percent electric. The Leaf can only go 100 miles per charge but the recharging stations will be able to fast charge in 15 minutes or less to 80 percent capacity....

On December 22, 2008, a holding pond for coal ash at the Kingston, Tennessee, coal fired power plant, the nations largest, breached the levee allowing 5.4 million cubic feet of toxic ash to flow into a nearby river, onto two dozen homes and covering 300 acres. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that operates the facility has already spent $143 million on cleaning up the spill and current estimates could top $933 million, and possibly going as high as $1.2 billion. There are hundreds of similar plants  around the nation with holding ponds for toxic sludge that are potential time bombs. Who do you think will be paying the tab for this clean-up?...