Help Protect Americans From Coal Ash

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TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress not to undermine EPA’s new Coal Ash Rule. This new rule puts in place the first ever plan to get a handle on toxic coal ash, the waste generated by burning coal at coal-fired power plants. To make your voice heard, click here.

Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia recently proposed a bill that would remove, delay, and weaken the public health and safety protections in EPA’s new coal ash rule. The bill would allow utilities to delay the cleanup and closure of dangerous dams and landfills where coal ash is dumped. In many cases, the bill would delay critical safety requirements for more than 10 years. Rep. McKinley’s proposal threatens our health, our safety, and the environment.

Three Alabama Power facilities in the Black Warrior basin have large amounts of coal ash waste stored in wet storage impoundments close to the water, which discharge tens of millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into the river every day: Gorgas Steam Plant on the Mulberry Fork, Miller Steam Plant on the Locust Fork, and Greene County Steam Plant on the lower Black Warrior. To view a map of Alabama drinking water sources downstream from coal-fired power plants’ coal ash waste impoundments, click here.

Fishermen by the Gorgas Steam Plant’s coal ash impoundment outfall, which discharges tens of millions of gallons of contaminated wastewater into the Mulberry Fork daily. Photo by Nelson Brooke.