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This is what we are allowing to be done to our environment by coal companies .
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Kudos to NYT for including the Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards .
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In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter federal controls of coal ash, but backed away in the face of fierce opposition from utilities, the coal industry, and Clinton administration officials. At the time, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power utilities, estimated that the industry would have to spend up to $5 billion in additional cleanup costs if the substance were declared hazardous.
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There is truly something wrong with the logic of not declaring a hazardous substance harmful because of the cost to the creators to clean up their mess.
.The spill ... released about 300 million gallons of sludge and water...
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United States coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year, the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste. That is enough to fill more than a million railroad coal cars, according to the National Research Council.
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Those byproducts are in addition to other pollution, including acid rain, releasing mercury into the air, particulates and numerous other pollutants.
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Another 2007 E.P.A. report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.
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It is my belief that we can no longer condemn any other nation when we allow this to continue and allow politicians to be guided by generous campaign contributions from dirty energy.
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