You've probably read many post-election reactions so far - our folks have written quite a few (Carl Pope's is here, Bruce Nilles' is here).

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune expounded on the election in his blog, but he also spoke at an environmental community press conference on Wednesday to examine the election's results and talk about what's next. Here are his remarks.

My colleague said it well yesterday in his response to Tuesday's election results - we will not cede our future to polluters, who again poured tens of millions of dollars into various campaigns.

No surprise here, the coal industry is part of those polluters throwing money around to support candidates who will keep the loopholes and handouts in place and help them block any action on global warming. According to an election spending report from the Center for American Progress:

American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has spent more than $16.3 million in 2010, including $3,005,540 on a national ad and buys in Washington, D.C., Montana, and Texas over the last three months. The group has budgeted $20 million for online campaigns. This Big Coal front group is infamous for its forged letters to members of Congress opposing clean energy and climate legislation that resulted in a congressional investigation.

But the shady politics don't stop there. If you ever wanted evidence that the coal industry is corrupting our politics, look no further than the state of Kansas and the decision Tuesday by Governor Mark Parkinson to fire his chief environmental official Rod Bremby.

In 2007, under then-Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Bremby had the courage to reject the massive proposed Sunflower coal plant because of its impacts on global warming. Global warming, Bremby argued, threatened the health and welfare of all Kansans.

After the state legislature enacted new legislation that attempted to eliminate Bremby's authority to reject the permit and Sebelius was called to Washington to serve as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Governor Parkinson struck a deal with Sunflower Corporation to fast-track the coal plant permit.

However, Bremby remained firm that he was not rushing the permitting and he had an obligation to ensure a fair and open public process and fulfill his legal duties to review the permit's legality before it could be issued.

But on Tuesday, with everyone consumed with election coverage, Governor Parkinson fired Bremby. This was a crass political move to ensure the permit is issued before the Governor leaves office in January 2011.

And another example of coal's corruption comes from Indiana, where Duke Energy is under investigation because "(a) top attorney in the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission took a job with Duke, which he appears to have negotiated at the same time he was overseeing decisions about Duke's new power plant."

The Duke plant is already under construction (and $1.3 billion over-budget) and will continue construction during this ethics investigation.

Meanwhile in Kentucky, coal isn't just proving itself unethical again, it's proving itself dangerous. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) announced yesterday it is asking a federal judge to shut down a Massey Energy coal mine in protect workers there. This the first time the MSHA has ever used this power.

In filing for a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court, the government cites persistently dangerous conditions in Massey Energy's Freedom Mine No. 1 in Pike County....The Freedom Mine employs about 130 miners and was cited for safety violations more than 700 times this year alone.

Coal is dirty and dangerous, and our politics and our health are at risk as long as the coal industry maintains its lock on our energy sector.

That is why our work is so very important. We are not giving up and we are not done.

Tomorrow, November 5th, the United States Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank is scheduled to consider greenhouse gas impacts of the controversial Kusile coal-fired power plant proposal in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa, a crucial decision point in the bank’s overall decision on whether to finance the project . Opposition from civil society groups from the global north and the global south is rapidly growing. These groups have demanded that Ex-Im Bank reject the enormous 4,800 megawatt Kusile coal plant based on the vast levels of greenhouse gas pollution it would generate, as well local pollution and financial mismanagement concerns.

If built, Kusile would be one of the largest greenhouse gas-emitting power plants in the world, which will also emit other forms of toxic pollution into the local environment. Kusile would increase South Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions nearly ten percent. Ex-Im Bank’s financing of Kusile would preempt South African strategies for low carbon growth embodied in the country’s incomplete second integrated resource plan (IRP2) and Climate Strategy Processes. This violates Ex-Im Bank’s policy for highly carbon intensive project financing, which requires that “[t]he host country shall have developed a Low Carbon Growth Plan or Strategy and the project must be consistent with the results and objectives of that Plan.”

“The Ex-Im Bank must respect the Integrated Resource Plan and Climate Strategy processes. South Africans must be able to pursue our own energy development path” said Sunita Dubey coordinator with groundWork in South Africa.

The project, and the South African state energy utility, Eskom, are the focus of growing opposition from local communities who will bear the brunt of such a disastrous decision.

“Eskom and their large industrial customers hide behind the rhetoric of solving energy poverty when it’s clear that it is the poor who will pay the most for this plant by subsidizing big industry with higher rates, and by the damage to the health of our communities, the air we breathe, and the water we drink” added Sunita Dubey.

While Ex-Im Bank meets to discuss the carbon implications of the project, controversies surrounding the finances of Eskom continue to mount. With public anger over financial bailouts to failing industries and banks still fresh in the minds of many American voters, civil society organizations are also questioning the financial wisdom of Ex-Im Bank bailing out Eskom.

Eskom has thus far only secured 11 percent of the $19 billion price tag required to move the project forward. This comes despite billions in direct loans and loan guarantees from the South African government. With project delays and costs rising every year, a shadow of doubt has fallen over this troubled project, which has consequently been unable to attract adequate private financing to fill the enormous financial gap. Ex-Im Bank’s financing is sought to help prop up this fiasco.

“As if bailing out Wall Street wasn’t enough, the U.S. government is now being asked to bail out this failing and mismanaged foreign utility,” said Doug Norlen, Policy Director for Pacific Environment.

In addition to the risks posed by Kusile, large capital needs for another enormous and highly controversial coal power project in South Africa – Medupi – have contributed to the drain on Eskom’s finances. Medupi was met with a firestorm of local and international opposition and required a loan of over $3 billion from the World Bank despite a $6 billion dollar direct loan from the South African government. However, the South African government has made it clear that it cannot directly contribute any more funds, creating a total cash shortfall of $25 billion according to Eskom’s 2010 annual report.

“Eskom has over-reached on these enormous dirty coal-fired power projects. They simply can’t secure the capital needed from foreign investors who see the clear risks associated with these investments,” said Karen Orenstein with Friends of the Earth U.S.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s National Export Initiative, which seeks to double exports over five years, has created a perverse incentive for Ex-Im Bank to prioritize large-scale fossil fuel financing, at the expense of the nascent clean technology sector.

“The Ex-Im Bank must say no to this project. What the U.S. needs is dramatically ramped up investments in clean energy technology to help revitalize our economy and launch commerce into the 21^st century, not bailouts for irresponsible utilities like Eskom,” said John Coequyt, Director of International Climate Programs at the Sierra Club.

This is the latest in our series of community coal ash profiles. This piece was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Sari Ancel.

Here's lovely daydream if you're from southeast Texas: It's a warm fall afternoon and you're out fishing on the banks of the Colorado River, listening to the sounds of birds migrating south.

Unfortunately, a proposed coal-fired power plant will soon ruin that daydream. There will be no fish to catch because their habitat has long been polluted. Those birds overhead will be flying through smoke plumes from the nearby coal-fired power plant. And forget a quiet afternoon, you'll be hearing the hum of that nearby power plant.

This is exactly what threatens Bay City, Texas - the proposed White Stallion coal-fired power plant.

On September 29th, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) granted an air quality permit to the White Stallion coal plant, which is proposed for Bay City, putting the polluting project one step closer to completion.

Yet despite this latest permit, residents of Bay City are not convinced that their air will stay clean or that their community will remain safe in the coming years - and for good reason. According to research, over its entire lifecycle, the plant will cause 600 premature deaths and cost over $5 billion in external costs to the community.

Alison Sliva of the Matagorda County No Coal Coalition is helping lead the fight against White Stallion coal plant. The 1320-megawatt plant will burn petroleum coke and coal but it is not required to produce an Environmental Impact Statement.

"The more you learn about this stuff, the more it makes you sick to your stomach," said Sliva, "It is so incredibly wrong the way things work."

She is worried about the environmental and health impacts this new coal plant will have on Bay City, a small city close to the Gulf Coast known for farming, shrimping, and world-class bird watching.

In addition to health impacts, the plant will require seven billion gallons of fresh Colorado River water every year. This fresh water is already a limited resource, with area farmers experiencing a severe drought in 2009.

"Water is the most finite commodity we have that the state is already fighting over," said Sliva. "And we're giving water to the dirty coal plant but not to our local food growers."

The White Stallion power plant design has also proposed coal ash dump sites just miles away from the Colorado River. Coal ash, which is the toxic waste left behind after coal is burned, contains arsenic, selenium, lead, and mercury. The dump site proposals are open coal ash pits, a design that is exceedingly dangerous when considering how prone this coastal area is to hurricanes. Bay City residents were asked to evacuate for hurricanes Ike and Rita.

The area also gets an average of 42 inches of rainfall yearly, and Silva and her fellow residents have yet to see an adequate coal ash flood plan from White Stallion

"I'm very concerned about the coal ash because it is virtually unregulated," she said. "We're going to have mountains of it. We have a shallow water table and we're worried about it leeching into the groundwater...I'm hoping that the (Environmental Protection Agency) comes through to regulate the coal ash."

Sliva is referring to the new coal ash safeguards proposed by EPA. She joined hundreds of others who went to an EPA public hearing in Dallas, Texas, to testify about the dangers of coal ash.

If EPA enacts stricter safeguards, then Sliva and the residents of Bay City will have one less problem to worry about with the White Stallion plant.

Unfortunately, that would still not be enough to fully protect Bay City. While the White Stallion plant promises job creation, this does not account for the Bay City jobs lost because farmers won't have enough water for irrigation and the impacts on the fishing industry due to polluted waters.

"We have a small rural community with little political clout," said Sliva. "We were targeted because they didn’t think anyone would fight it."

But Sliva and other members of Bay City have proven that wrong by fighting and gaining momentum against White Stallion coal plant.

"Bay City's motto isn't Beaches, Bay, Birding, and Coal Plant'" says Sliva. But, to stop this from happening, "people need to be calling, emailing, faxing, and writing letters to keep this issue in front of the faces of the agencies and elected officials. Keep waving the red flag and raise it up."

Tell EPA to enact strong federal safeguards for coal ash.

There's a ton of news out there about various clean energy and dirty energy issues, so here's another round-up of what you may have missed in the past week.

First up, today is the final Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) public hearing on its proposed safeguards for handling coal ash (the toxic by-product of burning coal for electricity). Today's hearing is in Knoxville - not too far from the site of the devastating 2008 coal ash spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston coal plant.

The Sierra Club has plenty of concerned community members at the hearing, all calling for strong safeguards from EPA for this toxic waste. Some folks are tweeting during the hearing, so watch the #coalash hashtag for their updates.

Continuing on the coal news front, the NY Times had two good articles up this week about the Navajo Nation in Arizona wanting to move away from coal power and toward clean energy like solar and wind power. Be sure to read "Navajos Come to Grips with Coal Mining" and "Navajos Hope to Shift from Coal to Wind and Sun." Both pieces also include quotes from Sierra Club organizers working hard on these issues.

In other coal news, the fight over this dirty energy source in Texas now includes available wawter resources. From a Houston Chronicle article:

Coal-fired power plants are commonly identified as the nation's biggest emissions villain. But that notoriety hasn't slowed the rush to build them in Texas, where there are nearly 30 coal plants either operating, permitted or proposed.

What has given many folks pause is the amount of water consumed by the plants.

Thermoelectric power plants - those that use heat to generate power, such as nuclear, coal and natural gas - are the single largest user of water in the United States. In Texas alone, they consume 157 billion gallons annually - enough water for more than 3 million people, each using 140 gallons per day, a recent University of Texas at Austin analysis found.

Moving on to natural gas news, yesterday Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced a moratorium on any future natural gas drilling on public lands in the state.

"The Sierra Club applauds this stopgap measure, but it is not enough," said Pennsylvania Sierra Club Director Jeff Schmidt. "We are appalled that the Pennsylvania Senate failed to pass a natural gas severance tax, a state forest protection bill, or other Marcellus gas-related legislation before adjourning. Senate leadership has chosen to put political campaigning ahead of the needs of the people of Pennsylvania."

The Keystone State is a natural gas battleground right now, with residents uniting to express their concerns about "fracking." On Nov. 3rd, the Pennsylania Sierra Club is joining a massive coalition protesting a natural gas conference in Pittsburgh. The Sierra Club nationally and in Pennsylvania are working hard to call for safe natural gas as a transition fuel.

On the dirty energy front, did you watch PBS' Frontline last night all about BP's history of safety infractions? The special covered not just those infractions that led up to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, but the company's many other deadly safety issues at a Texas refinery and along Alaska's north slope. You can now watch the full show online.

More depressing dirty energy news - tar sands continue to be terrible. The latest news is that 125 ducks had to be euthanized after landing in a massive tar sands waste pond in Canada. Let's not bring this dirty fuel into the U.S.

And now for some good news. Our good clean energy news comes from Houston, Texas, where settlement with Shell oil company enabled the installation of solar panels on two city high schools.

"We are delighted with this solar power project in the two south Houston schools -- It not only demonstrates the best direction for Texas clean energy future, it also provides real benefits to the schools and the young people," said Sierra Club's Jennifer Powis. "The school district is expected to save over $10,000 annually in reduced electricity bills and the students will study and learn how solar power works."

More good energy news, this time on the efficiency front. Yesterday EPA announced the winners of its First National Building Competition to Save Energy.

A residence hall at the University of North Carolina took first place - reducing "its energy use by 35.7 percent in one year, saving more than $250,000 on their energy bills and reducing more than 730 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity use of nearly 90 homes for a year."

The full results are inspiring.

Although apparently it isn't that sort of inspiration that will get people to go green. According to this fascinating Wall Street Journal article, peer pressure and guilt are what gets action.

Mary Anne Hitt, the director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, is a new mom and has some words for those trying to greenwash schoolkids and college students:

As a new mom, I'm paying more attention these days to how big companies are trying to influence our kids. I just learned that one of the biggest blockers of climate action in the U.S. is now bringing its obstructionism to your kid's middle school classroom. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy just released an energy education guide for teachers of 5th - 8th grade.

The guide explains to kids where our nation currently gets its energy, and then asks this question:

"What do you think could happen if one of our energy sources was suddenly unavailable (e.g., power plant maintenance, government curb on production, etc.)?"

Outside the classroom, the Chamber is working overtime to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from doing anything about global warming pollution. Of course, EPA would never put this nation in a position where "one of our energy sources was suddenly unavailable." But that doesn't stop the Chamber from suggesting that scary scenario to our nation’s kids and their teachers.

The Chamber has long opposed any action on curbing global warming pollution and other dangerous emissions from dirty power plants, whether it comes via action from the EPA or Congress.

Now they're focusing on instilling their wrong beliefs into our kids. Just look at the focus of their Institute for 21st Century Energy:

"The mission of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy is to unify policymakers, regulators, business leaders, and the American public behind a common sense energy strategy to help keep America secure, prosperous, and clean. Through policy development, education, and advocacy, the Institute is building support for meaningful action at the local, state, national, and international levels."

Sounds innocent enough, but after watching the Chamber spend millions against any action on cleaning up the dirty power plants that poison our air and water and cause global warming, it seems that we all know their real "common sense energy strategy" - make sure polluters can keep on polluting at current levels, regardless of the impact on today's kids and future generations.

Right now EPA is proposing several safeguards to protect Americans from the pollution caused by coal-fired power plants - including rules that would treat coal ash (the by-product of burning coal for electricity) as the toxic waste that it is. EPA officials have already said that living near a toxic coal ash site can be worse for kids' health than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

The Chamber doesn't like these proposals, or any others that would require utilities to clean up coal pollution, and they are working overtime to stop them.

And this isn't the first time that the Chamber or the coal industry has directly targeted kids or young people with a misleading pro-coal message.

• In early 2009, the Coal Education Development and Resource of Southern West Virginia, Inc., taught students to appreciate the destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. (If you're not familiar with mountaintop removal coal mining and its threats, read more here).

• In mid-2009, coal industry front-group Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy released coloring books for kids.

• The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (who we remember for hiring a firm that forged letters from interest groups to Congressional representatives about global warming legislation) is currently running a bus tour to our nation's college campuses to teach them about so-called "clean" coal. They just hit up West Virginia University.

• The coal industry gave so much money to the University of Kentucky that the administration renamed a dorm as Wildcat Coal Lodge last year.

The list goes on and on. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the coal industry want you to believe that coal will not affect your or your children's health, and that any action by EPA will destroy the economy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

So for my new baby and the rest of America's kids, I’d like to add my own discussion question to the Chamber's energy education guide:

"What do you think could happen if we don't shift from coal and oil to clean energy sources, and families find that pollution makes the basic essentials of life suddenly unavailable (e.g., clean air, clean water, etc.)?"

This is the latest in our series of community coal ash profiles. This was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Philip Hawes.

Tennessee's Emory River has long been treasured for its natural beauty.

In 1867, when a young man by the name of John Muir decided to walk from his home in Indiana, all the way to Florida, he crossed the Emory River. Its beauty struck him, and he wrote the following in his journal (which became his famed book "A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf"):

"There is nothing more eloquent in Nature than a mountain stream, and this is the first I ever saw. Its banks are luxuriantly peopled with rare and lovely flowers and overarching trees, making one of Nature's coolest and most hospitable places. Every tree, every flower, every ripple and eddy of this lovely stream seemed solemnly to feel the presence of the great Creator. Lingered in this sanctuary a long time thanking the Lord with all my heart for his goodness in allowing me to enter and enjoy it."

Unfortunately, 141 years later, the Emory River would inspire sorrow.

On December 22, 2008, a little before 1 a.m., an earthen dam holding back an 84-acre coal ash disposal pond, collapsed. A flood of 1.1 billion gallons (around six times the amount of BP's oil disaster) of coal ash slurry poured into the Emory River and onto the surrounding land. Coal ash is the by-product of burning coal for electricity and contains toxic materials such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and selenium. The spill covered more than 400 acres and destroyed houses, roads, and trees in its path.

"It was unreal. There's no way to imagine what it was like," said Steve Scarborough, a resident of Roane County, where the disaster took place. "They keep saying it's an ash spill. That's like saying an avalanche is a snow spill."

The earthen dam that failed had problems for years, including multiple leaks. And Scarborough, a civil engineer himself, said that the fixes they made were inadequate, based on bad engineering, and chosen just to cut costs. According to Scarborough, it was "just sheer incompetence. And the community suffered because of it."

Scarborough owns two properties on a lake adjacent to the spill site. He had purchased them ten years earlier as an investment. Before the disaster he had both properties on the market, deciding to sell them in order to put his kids through college. But now, he said, "They're worth pennies on the dollar."

Despite the national real estate market being down in late 2008, the real estate values in the area were relatively strong - until they crumbled following the coal ash disaster.

Scarborough said, "Even in the worst of times there are still people retiring, and we are that market. This is where they retire to. The value of waterfront properties had not yet declined." But afterwards, no one wanted to buy property, even miles away.

He spoke of one couple that decided against waterfront property in Roane County after hearing about the coal ash disaster: "The wife saw the newspaper and they stormed out. They bought waterfront property; they just bought it the next county."

Many land owners sued the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which operates the coal plant and coal ash disposal site responsible for the disaster, for the lost value of their property. But Scarborough said that to get money for their property, many of the people signed settlements with TVA that included a gag order and a waiver for any future health problems. Scarborough hasn't filed a lawsuit with TVA, saying he's just "trying to get TVA to do the right thing. Whatever's fair." But, he added, "They just don't want to do it."

The economic problems due to the disaster aren't limited to real estate. The tourism industry in the area has also been severely hurt, and Scarborough said that's affected the entire local economy, calling it "economic devastation."

The cost of cleanup could end up totaling $1 billion, in addition to lost property value, lost tourism, and the effects it has had on the rest of the local economy, as well as possible health risks.

Following the disaster, TVA performed a health study to find out if any health problems had been caused by the spill. But, Scarborough said, the study was very incomplete. Out of the 200 volunteers that participated in the study, only a small handful actually lived in the immediate area.

"The study came out saying that there are no health effects. That's total bullsh-t. They're putting their heads in the sand. And they're trying to push our heads in the sand." He continued, "If you believe TVA, I've got a couple lakeside lots to show you."

For the almost two years since the disaster occurred, TVA has been dredging coal ash out of the water, putting it into rail cars, and sending it to Alabama to another disposal site. Scarborough said they fill around 100 rail cars a day with the material.

TVA claims to have removed around 90% of the coal ash, but Scarborough believes isn't true. He says as they're dredging, they pick up a lot of sediment along with the ash. Any material that is less than half sediment is classified as coal ash, which means a lot of what they're picking up isn't actually coal ash.

Above all, Scarborough is tired of coal companies avoiding responsibility for their mistakes.

"If we put a rock through someone's window, we have to buy a new window, and that doesn't seem to be the case with these coal companies. TVA is in denial - they aren't owning up to what they've done."

The disaster in Tennessee was one of the major reasons Lisa Jackson and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed new safeguards for coal ash disposal. Having proposed two possible rulings, EPA has been holding public hearings around the country for citizens to weigh in on the decision. Scarborough traveled to North Carolina to testify at the September 14th EPA hearing and he’ll also attend the Tennessee hearing on October 27th.

Scarborough said that the disaster in Tennessee wouldn't have happened if EPA had already passed federal safeguards for coal ash disposal.

"Having seen the results of lax oversight, we feel we have to campaign for the most stringent regulatory option," he said. "This cannot be left to the states where lobbyists wield oversized power on compliant legislators. We don't want anyone else to go through what we've been through."

Scarborough points out that the coal ash from the Tennessee disaster that has been shipped to Alabama still hasn't gone away. "To be honest with you, the remedy, where they're storing the ash now, it's not contained. They just built a wall around it." Since there still aren't yet any federal regulations, the same coal ash that caused so much destruction in Tennessee still isn't being stored in a safe manner.

Scarborough calls Roane County stunningly beautiful and is hopeful for the time years from now when the mess is cleaned up. But about John Muir's famous walk, he says, "He'd be pretty disappointed in what he saw if he was there today."

Hot off the presses: EPA just announced it is recommending rejecting the massive Spruce Mine in Logan County, West Virginia, for the simple reason that it can't comply with long-standing clean water protections. EPA Region 3 and Administrator Shawn Garvin recommended that the permit for Spruce be withdrawn (read the recommendation in our press release).

In short, this proposed mountaintop removal coal mine would release huge amounts of toxic pollution into the state's waterways. That has been illegal across the country and today Lisa Jackson is proposing the same protections for Appalachia.

Today's recommendation flows from President Obama's and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's commitment to restore science and uphold our bedrock Clean Water Act. EPA is proposing to take the radical step to ensure that the residents of Appalachia have the same clean water protections afforded other residents around the country.

For far too long Appalachia's residents have been subjected to pollution from coal mining practices that would be prohibited elsewhere in the United States. There are so many local grassroots heroes who have spent more than a decade fighting this massive mountaintop removal coal mine.

As we have worked with our members and allies in Appalachia to tell the story nationwide about the incredible destruction associated with mountaintop removal mining, the overwhelming response we hear outside of Appalachia is "How can that be allowed to happen in the United States?"

This decision is long overdue. During the Bush Administration hundreds of mines were approved, dozens of mountains were razed and pollution killed stream after stream after stream. Sierra Club and our allies are working to stop this pollution, and recently a federal court ordered a $45 million clean up of an existing mine, but it is far better to not approve these mines in the first instance.

The next step is for EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to put the final nail in this destructive project and finalize her decision. This decision should then guide the agency to do what the science and public health demands - end the practice of mountaintop removal mining once and for all. We need a uniform rule that says no more mountaintop removal mining, period.

Let's put this devastating practice behind us. Let's put residents to work restoring the land and waters damaged by coal mining over the past decades. And, let's overcome the naysayers who oppose Appalachia sharing in the jobs and economic development that comes with building a clean, renewable energy future underway across the country.

This is the latest in our series of community coal ash profiles. This piece was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Lydia Avila.

The community of Joliet, Illinois, identifies as many things - Midwestern, humble, and hard-working. Yet they also identify with something much less positive: being collateral damage. According to Joliet residents, they don't even merit a second thought to Midwest Generation, a coal-fired power plant that has been dumping toxic coal ash near Joliet for over 40 years.

Coal ash is the byproduct of burning coal for electricity, and it's having a major impact on Joliet. Residents say if you were to spend a week in Joliet you would find yourself driving through coal ash fog; a stroll in your yard would cause you to come back covered in "black stuff" and/or yellow particulates; you wouldn't be able to drink or bathe in the water; and your clothes would come out of the washer tinted orange and black from the chemicals in the water.

If you spent time in Joliet, residents say, you would see this "black stuff" covering your car, yard and house on a daily basis, and you certainly could not fish in any of the lakes, rivers or streams in the area.

But, they added, even worse are the health effects that you and your loved ones would experience: nose bleeds, blisters, skin infections, migraines, coughing, gagging, mercury poisoning, neurological disorders, to name a few. And, these would culminate in the form of asthma, kidney transplants, heart transplants, lymphoma, neurological disorders, seizures, rare forms of leukemia, emergency hysterectomies, and lupus (again, just to name a few).

Tammy Thompson knows the health effects first-hand - calling herself and her family part of that collateral damage. Her six-year-old daughter Faith has suffered the effects of living near a coal plant since she was born. Faith’s doctor diagnosed her with Grave's Disease and recommended that she, and all the children in Joliet, be routinely tested for lead and mercury poisoning.

Thompson recalls times when she often had to struggle to gain composure in her car, while her daughter in the backseat would ask, "What's that smell, mommy?" and then complain of headaches. She saw her daughter suffer from blisters and sores every time they bathed her in a storage tub filled with bottled water following recommendations from her doctor, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) and others. Yet, for a long time, their health problems remained a mystery.

Thompson and her neighbors have taken matters into their own hands, filing report after report and making phone call after phone call to local, state and federal agencies. When Thompson discusses the actions taken by the people of Joliet, she underscores the fact that this is a human issue: "I'm not an environmentalist, I'm a mom. I'm not an activist, I'm an American," she said.

Unfortunately, Joliet residents say their concerns have consistently been ignored by every public agency and department that, in theory, is supposed to help them.

The IEPA and local officials play a game of ping pong with their cries for help, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims not to have jurisdiction over the area. The IEPA likes to claim that these diseases occur naturally, but there is nothing natural about the levels at which they occur in Joliet.

On the rare occasions when the IEPA has returned a few a call, agency officials have tried to justify the horrendous living conditions by saying the jobs at the coal plant and its coal ash disposal site are needed.

Thompson says that supposed "gain" certainly pales in comparison to watching her family and friends suffer the health effects. "'Get use to it and get over it' is what they try to tell us," Thompson said.

Not surprisingly, when the Environmental Integrity Project and Sierra Club's recently released coal ash report, "In Harm's Way," Joliet was listed as one of the most contaminated sites in the country. The town of Joliet has received national attention from such figures as Erin Brockovich and, at the time, Senator Obama.

Thompson and her community continue to ask why they aren't receiving any help. "Why doesn't the EPA prove something is safe? Why must we wait for a body count to show it’s not?" asked Thompson.

"It's not an environmental issue; it's an ethical, social and civil rights issue."

Tell EPA we need strong federal safeguards for toxic coal ash.

This post is the latest in our series of community coal ash profiles. It was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Flavia de la Fuente.

When a company named Making Money, Having Fun LLC (how's that for Orwellian?) applied for a permit for a commercial disposal facility to dump coal ash (along with waste oil and gas water) in eastern Oklahoma, they provided geographical maps and documents indicating that, pursuant to the Corporation Commission rules, there was no town of a population below 20,000 within three miles.

Except that's not true.

The town of Bokoshe (450 people) has been there since the 1800s. You can drive through it, you can stop at the post office, and you can graduate from the high school.

But for Making Money, Having Fun, there is no town and there are no rules. For eight years, they have been dumping waste oil and gas water and driving trucks of toxic coal fly ash (as many as 80 trucks in a single day), the product of a nearby coal-fired power plant run by AES, through the main street in town and dumping it in a pit a mere mile and a half from Bokoshe. Dozens of people in Bokoshe have died of cancer or are battling it right now, and children with asthma wake up in the middle of the night, struggling to breathe, afraid that they're going to die.

Diane Reece, an elementary school teacher in Bokoshe, protested the fly ash pit from the beginning.

"We didn't know anything about fly ash at the time," she said. "When they granted us a meeting downtown, it was a courtesy, because they were going to do it anyways. They haven't honored any of the promises they made, and they said it was harmless. And we believed them."

Tim Tanksley, another local Bokoshe resident, also recalls being told not to worry: "They just told everybody it was dirt, that you could put it on your peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

Choosing a site near Bokoshe was nothing if not predatory. Reece stated, "In small towns you have people who help each other. It's a beautiful place to live. It's a wonderful thing to live in a community to help each other. And I feel that they have chosen small towns because we are so trusting. We trusted that they wouldn't be dumping anything to harm us."

"They" is a broad term for the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (lead state agency in charge of oil and gas water that issued the original permit), and the Department of Mines (lead agency in charge of reclamation).

To Reece and other Bokoshe residents, also complicit is Oklahoma's political leadership: the governor who appoints people to these various commissions, the local congressional representative, and the senators from Oklahoma, who in theory are charged with representing the interests of their constituents.

The ODEQ refuses to acknowledge that fugitive coal fly ash is impacting people and property outside the fence line. The Department of Mines refuses to acknowledge that the pit is leaking contaminated wastewater. And Oklahoma's political leadership refuses to acknowledge basic, incontrovertible science.

Tim Tanksley appealed directly to Senator James Inhofe and Representative Dan Boren to help, who in turn replied, "The fly ash is temporarily mounded while it is mixed with water to form slurry. Ultimately, the mine will be transformed into a pasture. Therefore, the fly ash mound is temporary and will disappear once the reclamation is complete."

Meanwhile, Senator Inhofe and Representative Boren are both helping the pit stay open.

According to Harlan Hentges, Oklahoman and attorney for Bokoshe residents, "Senator Inhofe is all over this thing. EPA stopped (the company) from dumping out there. After that happened, the Senator called EPA to find out when they could resume dumping in the pit. Representative Dan Boren did the same thing."

Hentges has learned to follow the money. "Those businesses pay a whole lot of money to do whatever the hell they want to do. They pay people to exploit the power that they have on their behalf. And you come up with all kinds of interesting ways to justify it. It's becoming really, really hard to justify in Bokoshe. What is wrong with this? What is so twisted here? Why is it so bad that we don't think you should dump fly ash into a pit?"

Bokoshe residents are fighting back, and founded B.E. Cause to protect their town, their health, and the future of their children. They've tussled with state agencies, with their elected officials, and even with other people in Bokoshe.

There's a younger generation that is fighting back as well: Diane Reece's class of sixth graders has taken the kind of initiative that reassures us that small towns are still America's moral compass.

Thanks to a federal grant program called "Learn and Serve America" there is structured time set aside for Reece's class (pictured below) to serve their community. Proposals for this year's program included a "Welcome to Bokoshe" sign and a bench downtown for the gossip group (it's a small town, after all).

But then three girls raised their hands and said, "We need to stop the fly ash." Reece asked the class how many people had asthma, and of the 17 students, 9 raised their hands.

Reece recalled, "That was my answer. They started telling me about what it's like to have asthma. I was listening to them tell me how their attacks made them feel like they were going to die."



"We're just getting started," said Reece, "my sixth graders are leading the cause. The other night at our parent-teacher conference, they got 25 signatures in an hours' time. And this type of stuff is important, because out here, not everybody has access to computers and the internet. Tonight at the football game, we're going to pass out flyers about fly ash."

Bokoshe may be a small town, but the residents have big hearts.

There's been a slew of stories about coal this week - so let's share them. First up is a great piece on coal ash from CNN - specifically the huge Little Blue Run coal ash lake in WV and PA: (transcript here)



Possible coal ash spills have been on our radar for many reasons lately (including EPA's public hearings on coal ash, but especially because of the huge toxic spill in Hungary. Think a massive toxic spill like that can't happen in the U.S.? Think again (and remember the massive coal ash spill in Tennessee in December 2008).



Not to mention the coal ash spill that happened last week in Ohio and killed more than 4,000 animals - PLUS the coal ash spill that hit North Carolina around the same time!

Coal ash is toxic waste and must be treated as such - tell EPA we need strong federal safeguards for it!

In other coal news, EPA proposed yesterday that the massive Boardman coal-fired power plant in Arizona must "install $717 million in pollution controls to curb emissions that spread haze over the Four Corners region of the Southwest..."

And finally in coal news, Treehugger has a post up about a new report detailing why fish closer to coal-fired power plants shows fewer traces of mercury than fish farther away. (Hint, it's not because coal is clean).

The coal industry is a filthy business, but that doesn't stop the industry from spending a fortune on PR consultants to try and distract attention away from the costs it imposes on Americans every day. With labels like "clean coal" and "green coal," the coal industry's spinmeisters spend a lot of time and money trying to pretend coal is something it is not.

Now in response to a successful campaign by the Sierra Club and our allies in the United States to stop the construction of new coal plants - we are up to 145 plants stopped - Peabody Energy - the world's largest coal company - is proposing to grow its market by shipping coal overseas to impoverished countries.

Peabody's rationale for going overseas? They have a moral duty to alleviate energy poverty in countries that lack access to electricity.

Before exploring Peabody's new campaign to ship coal overseas, let's take stock at the industry's anti-poverty legacy in the United States:

1. The three poorest counties in America are all in Appalachia's coal country and have given for decades at the altar of King Coal. And while the coal barons are richer, the counties have nothing but rampant poverty to show for the toxic mess Peabody and its ilk have left behind. Just which country is Peabody imagining aspires to be dominated by coal and look like the poorest parts of Appalachia or the Southern Illinois coalfields?



2. Last month the Clean Air Task Force released a new report documenting that the fine particle pollution from coal plants causes upwards of $100 billion in health costs every year. These costs include asthma attacks, emergency room visits, and cancer. In addition to the Americans who are breathing coal's pollution and paying with health problems, all of us are also paying higher insurance costs and taxes to pay for coal's pollution.

The $100 billion health costs that coal is imposing on Americans is about the same amount Americans pay in health care costs resulting from smoking, and this is only the cost from particle pollution. It does not include the health care costs from other coal toxins like mercury causing brain disorders, or the environmental costs of fish-less lakes and streams across the Adirondacks and Appalachia. Smoking and coal burning are twin ills, literally killing and maiming Americans every day.

Over the past five years, the Sierra Club and our allies have highlighted coal's cost on our health and environment and stopped more than 145 new coal plants from breaking ground, effectively ending the industry's opportunity to grow in the United States. Now in response, the industry is taking another page from the tobacco industry's playbook: Ship its deadly product overseas

Peabody Energy recently announced its new campaign to "end global energy poverty." The company is proposing to ship U.S. coal overseas to bring electricity and prosperity to the world's two billion residents that lack access to electricity.

Peabody urges us to ignore coal's pollution and focus on poverty:

"The greatest crisis we confront in the 21st Century is not a future environmental crisis predicted by computer models, but a human crisis today that is fully within our power to solve. For too long, too many have been focused on the wrong end game," said [Peabody CEO and Chairman] Gregory Boyce.

"For everyone who has voiced a 2050 greenhouse gas goal, we need 10 people and policy bodies working toward the goal of broad energy access. Only once we have a growing, vibrant, global economy providing energy access and an improved human condition for billions of the energy impoverished can we accelerate progress on environmental issues such as a reduction in greenhouse gases."

Peabody's Boyce even had the audacity to say, "We must put people first." Which people is he referring to? The miners who paid the ultimate price at the Big Branch disaster in April? The 13,000 people who die annually from coal plant pollution?

Peabody wants us to ignore coal's complete lack of concern for its worker and pollution here in the U.S. because it wants to divert focus onto another problem. (They've even got it all spelled out in this Power Point presentation).

This PR ploy is ugly and offensive, and an act of desperation. Students at Washington University in St. Louis recently protested Peabody's Boyce's appearance at their school: "Alleviating poverty worldwide is something we should all be focusing on, especially as we look at developing a clean energy future that is open to everyone - selling more coal however, will only help pad Peabody's pockets."

Just like other dangerous and corrupting corporations before it - read tobacco - the coal industry when feeling the pressure in the U.S. has always tried to target the workers, communities and countries least able to resist their abuses. Today in the U.S., with a national movement to move the country beyond coal there is a bright spotlight on the filthy lifecycle of coal from mining to burning to ash disposal, and the coal industry is running out of places to hide.

It has also run out of growth opportunities in the U.S. and other wealthy countries, and now wants to exports its pollution to developing countries.

Nice try, but we are not going to let this happen.

Mr. Peabody, consider yourself on notice. You can run, but you can't hide. We will not let you replicate your century of abuse of our workers, of our communities, of our environment, elsewhere in the world. We will use every outlet we have to collaborate with our allies overseas, to alert them that you are offering fool's gold, that clean energy is cheaper and lacks coal's polluting and corrupting ways. You will find no resting place.

This latest plan - perhaps your most audacious cynical ploy to date - will fail as surely as your efforts to build 150 new coal plants in the United States.

This post is the latest in our series of coal ash community profiles. Our work on coal ash unfortunately becomes timely yet again, as news came out this week of a breach at a coal ash impoundment in North Carolina. This week's profile was written by Sierra Club Apprentice Andrea Sanchez.

There is nothing little about Little Blue Run Dam, the coal fly ash impoundment that reaches into both Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Coal ash is the toxic by-product of burning coal for electricity - the Little Blue Run ash impoundment belongs to the Bruce Mansfield Plant. This plant is FirstEnergy's largest coal-fired power plant, burning around seven million tons of coal annually.

At full capacity, the three plants that make up Bruce Mansfield complex produce four million gallons of coal slurry daily. This is where Little Blue comes in.


Seven miles of pipeline will bring you to a 1,694 acre disposal site known as Little Blue (see its eerie blue color in the above Google Maps satellite image). By the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) own admission, Little Blue is one of 49 sites around the country whose dam currently has a High Hazard Potential rating. This rating means that if the dam holding back Little Blue's toxic slurry - the largest earthen dam in the country - were to breach, it would result in probable loss of life, largely to communities across the river in Ohio.

In addition to the structural hazard, coal ash also contains toxic metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and selenium, to name a few, and so far EPA has not required special liners to ensure that coal ash does not contaminate nearby waterways.

Debbie Havens, of the West Virginia side of the impoundment, remembers the first time the energy company spoke to her about the expansion of the impoundment years ago. A man came to her home armed with a colorful brochure and said, "There will be swimming, boating, walking and bike trails, a place my family could spend time together."

She told him, "I'm sorry sir, but I have a hard time believing that." That was the first and only time that anyone came to her door. Now large properties are being bought off left and right to make room for more coal ash waste at Little Blue.

For those living near unlined coal ash impoundments the risk of cancer can be as high as 1 in 50, which is 2,000 times higher than EPA's "acceptable cancer risk of 1 in 100,000." This statistic only takes into account the risk of cancer from arsenic exposure in drinking water.

When looking at the entire list of toxins contained in coal ash, the health risks are even worse. Havens' husband had his thyroid removed several years ago after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer and now Havens herself has a thyroid nodule which doctors are watching. Doctors also found three benign tumors doctors in her breast.

With no family history of thyroid problems, her endocrinologist has assessed that environmental exposure as the cause and told her, "You need to move or you will never survive this stuff."

In her community three men have already died from cancer this year. One thing is sure, she said, "Life is a lot different than that pretty brochure 36 years ago."

On the other side of the impoundment in Pennsylvania, Barb Reed and her son are living about a mile away from the site in Georgetown. Reed has lived in the area since 1978; her son is now living with her because he can no longer use his own water. His home is closer to the impoundment and after both FirstEnergy and the state Department of Environmental Protection found that the levels of arsenic in his water were exceeding the maximum EPA levels, he decided he had to leave his home.

"It's terribly upsetting because he can't even take showers or wash dishes, he's had to leave his home, and he's still paying a mortgage on it," said Reed. "They haven't even offered him a viable water supply because they claim it is not their fault."

If the risk of cancer, the potential for contaminated water, and the destroyed landscape isn’t enough - there is also the smell of rotten eggs. "You can't breathe because of the smell. Your throat burns, your eyes burns, everyday we're surrounded by fly ash," said Havens.

Even from a mile away Reed is reluctant to use her water because of the smell of rotten eggs coming from the tap. While she used to garden in her own backyard, she now grows vegetables out of buckets with store-bought soil to avoid eating contaminated produce.

It is time for EPA to treat coal ash as the toxic waste that it is. Both of Reed and Havens have attended the EPA coal ash public hearings in their areas hoping to get the agency to enact federally enforceable standards that will treat coal not like household garbage - but as toxic waste.

"A banana peel is household waste, not fly ash," said Havens.

Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign Director Mary Anne Hitt rallies against mountaintop removal coal mining with her baby Hazel. Photo courtesy of Appalachia Rising.

Yesterday's massive Appalachia Rising rally and march was a big success - with more than 2,000 activists taking to the streets in DC to call for an end to mountaintop removal coal mining.


For some great recaps, be sure to check the Appalachia Rising website, these two posts from our campus coal organizers, and these two posts from Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard.


If you're unfamiliar with mountaintop removal coal mining, it is a destructive practice where coal companies blow up mountains to get at a seam of coal beneath. They then push all the dirt - much of which now includes toxins - into nearby valleys, which then poisons watersheds.

Take action against this practice right now.


The photos with this post (excluding the first one) were all taken by Jay Mallin and show the march, along with some folks getting arrested in front of the White House (the Sierra Club was not part of the civil disobedience).

This week's coal ash community profile was written by Elizabeth Irvin, a Sierra Club Apprentice.

Ash about 20 feet over containment berm, 50 yards from residents’ homes in Riverside Gardens. Picture is taken from 2nd story window of resident's house. Credit: Thomas Pearce, Sierra Club.

For one weekend each year in early May, Louisville, Kentucky, boasts an abnormally high concentration of horses, jockeys, mint juleps, and elaborate hats. Less than ten miles from Churchill Downs, the neighborhood of Riverside Gardens has been dealing with an abnormal and deadly concentration of toxic chemicals every day for more than 40 years. A low income neighborhood in an area of Louisville known for its concentration of chemical plants, landfills, and power plants, Riverside Gardens may soon be forced to deal with yet another threat: a second coal ash dump in their community.

Monica Burkhead thought she was living the American dream when she bought a house in Riverside Gardens at the age of 17. She was assured that the neighborhood was safe, but has since learned that she is surrounded by growing quantities of all forms of toxic waste. The sources of these toxins include 11 chemical plants, a 2.4 million cubic yard unlined chemical landfill that is one of the state's oldest superfund sites, and multiple unlined coal ash waste ponds at the Cane Run coal plant owned by Louisville Gas and Electric.

The oldest of these coal ash ponds was built in the 1970s, but there are no records of any monitoring of any pond until 2005. The largest of these ponds is one of 49 nationwide that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has designated as "high hazard" - meaning that a dam failure like the 2008 disaster in Tennessee would probably result in loss of life. Ash in this pond looms 20 feet over the containment berm, 50 yards from homes and within 350 yards of the Ohio River.

Louisville Gas and Electric is currently seeking permits to "expand" the pond at the Cane Run coal plant by constructing a new 5.7 million cubic yard, 14-story-tall pond some 1,500 feet from the existing one. What little data can be obtained about the existing ponds shows that they have been leaking sulfates into local groundwater. Neither the coal plant nor the state government has made public any tests of the toxic heavy metals found in coal ash, including arsenic, selenium, and mercury.

Monica and her neighbors live in a community ravaged by cancer. EPA has found that people living near coal ash ponds have a risk of cancer greater than that of smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. Community organizers say that behind every door they knock on is someone with either cancer or kidney failure.

When Monica took the community's concerns to the chemical and coal companies, they told her that it was their lifestyles, and not the toxic contamination, that was making them sick. Monica doesn't smoke or drink, eats healthily, and gets regular exercise. All of her family members except her husband have battled cancer. The industries evidently consider living in Riverside Gardens a lifestyle choice, even though the neighborhood existed long before plants that are now polluting it.

Resident Terri Humphrey expressed a common sentiment when she told a community meeting, "I believe the companies think that it’s already so bad down there that it doesn’t matter if they dump something else on us."

Monica, Terri, and other Riverside Gardens residents will testify at the upcoming EPA coal ash hearing in Louisville on September 28th. Monica says that EPA can begin to repair her trust in government’s ability to protect communities by enacting a strong, federally enforceable rule that ends dangerous practices like the ones employed at the Cane Run plant.

Last spring, a group of children at nearby Farnsley Middle School were top 10 finalists in a competition to be "America's Greenest School." In the video they produced, students talk about their plans to manage the school's waste more responsibly. Strong leadership from EPA and Administrator Lisa Jackson can make coal companies live up to the example set by the students in their own community.

See www.sierraclub.org/coalash to learn more and take action on toxic coal ash.

This is a guest Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign blog post written by Gabriel DeRita, a Sierra Club Communications Apprentice. Also, follow today's EPA coal ash public hearing in Chicago via our @SierraClubLive and @SierraClubIL Twitter accounts.

The area around Surry County, Virginia, is already home to some sinister projects, including several major coal ash disposal sites and Michael Vick's infamous dog fighting operation. One of the disposal sites is the local golf course, the Battlefield Golf Club. The green is sculpted with 1.5 million tons of coal fly-ash.

Now a major Virginia power provider, the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC), wants to site a 1500 mega watt coal plant, accompanied by several hundred acres of ash disposal sites, along the Blackwater River in Surry.

This project, if completed, will be the largest coal-fired power plant in Virginia. Its coal ash will be stored in several landfill areas around the plant. If the power plant itself falls through, ODEC representatives have indicated an option of developing the site as an exclusive coal ash landfill.

Executives announced on Wednesday, September 8, that the project deadline is being pushed back from 2016 to 2020, citing concerns over pending federal regulations and lagging electricity demand. Though ODEC remains committed to pursuing the project, the delay comes as a welcome relief to local residents, and backs up arguments made by environmental and community groups that there is no pressing need for coal-fired power from such a massive plant.

Local residents like Betsy Shepard, mother of two, have been fighting ODEC tooth and nail since 2008, and the announcement comes as a major vindication of their efforts. Shepard is a busy full-time mom, but found the time to take a leading role in her community's fight to curb the march of coal ash contamination.

"I had no intentions of taking such an active role in the fight, but as is often the case in small communities, one has to step up and lend a hand when there is a need," said Shepard.

You've seen our push against toxic coal ash continue over the past few months as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeks public comment on how to regulate coal ash. Our push continues this week with the unveiling of a new coal ash video we produced and a Facebook application. Take a look at the video first:



Left over after coal is burned, coal ash contains a dangerous mix of arsenic, mercury, lead and other pollution, pollution known to cause cancer and other serious illnesses. As was noted in the video, living near some coal ash sites can be more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

To keep the pressure on EPA to regulate coal ash based on how toxic it is, we are launching new efforts to educate and engage citizens, many of whom are unaware that they may live near a toxic coal ash site.

This week we launched a new Facebook application, the Toxic Coal Ash Site Locator, which allows you to find out how close you, your friends and family live to these toxic dumps.

Try it now, and then take action. There are still EPA coal ash public hearings left across the U.S. - attend one to voice your concern, or submit your comments via email right now.

The Environmental Protection Agency is in the middle of a series of public hearings at sites around the country to gather input on new protections from toxic coal ash. This week's blog post comes from Sierra Club Apprentice JennyKordick.

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After watching a deer refuse to drink water from a reservoir on a hot summer day last August, Colstrip, Montana area ranchers knew something was wrong. The water, found to contain toxic levels of sulfates, was traced back to a coal ash dump.

Coal ash contamination in Colstrip, Montana dates back nearly 30 years. Colstrip sits on one of the largest coal deposits in North America, and is home to four coal-fired power plants owned by Pennsylvania Power and Light (PP&L).The company disposes of coal ash, the toxic by-product of burning coal, in wet ash dumps, known as settling ponds,in the area.

Insufficient pond linings and poor construction techniques, in addition to lack of state environmental regulation,have led to widespread contamination of water resources in Colstrip. "The state of Montana has had every opportunity to right this wrong, and has failed in every way," said Clint McRae, a Colstrip area rancher.

The ranching community in Colstrip, including McRae, expressed concern about the ash settling ponds used to dispose of coal ash, but were assured by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality the ponds would not leak, and if they did, the power plants would be shut down.

"We were lied to." McRae stated. "We trusted our state and federal agencies to represent our best interests, and keep us from damage. This has not happened."

The livelihood of McRae and other ranchers in Colstrip is threatened by toxic coal ash, as healthy water quality is critical to the success of ranching operations. Simply put, cows drinking toxic water will die. Two coal ash ponds in the area were found to be leaking water containing 16 times the amount of sulfates needed to cause death in cattle.

Instead of cleaning up the coal ash contamination and fixing the leaks, PP&L has opted for a cheaper method to silence the issue. This involves fencing off contaminated ponds, and buying up damaged and polluted land, including the land containing the reservoir where the deer refused to drink.

PP&L is getting by with this for now, but McRae, whose family has been in the area for five generations, makes one thing clear: "Our places are not for sale."

In 2008, PP&L settled for $25 million with 60 homeowners in Colstrip whose drinking water became contaminated. McRae, who was not involved in the lawsuit, is acting as a voice for his family and neighbors that settled with PP&L and can no longer speak out on the issue. McRae traveled to the Denver coal ash hearing last week to speak out for strong, federally enforceable protections from coal ash as the Environmental Protection Agency considers a proposal to federally regulate toxic coal ash disposal for the first time-a proposal that, after more than two decades, may finally help stop leaking coal ash ponds and protect the families in Colstrip.

The Denver hearing McRae attended was the second of seven hearings nationwide that are being held to gather public opinion on how to regulate toxic coal ash disposal. See www.sierraclub.org/coalash for more information and to find out how you can tell the EPA what you think.

One familiar talking point from rich coal executives is the notion that coal is cheap and clean. "Clean coal" is, of course, a myth. Not only is coal mining dirty, but so are the habits of coal companies that try to circumvent protective environmental and public health regulations.

That's why Patriot Coal was held in contempt this week by a federal judge for dumping of a toxic byproduct called selenium into streams of West Virginia. The judge also ordered Patriot Coal to cough up (pun intended) $45 million to pay for the treatment of the poisonous toxin that was coming from two of its coal mines in West Virginia.

Selenium is a toxin that deforms fish and keeps them from reproducing. It's commonly linked to coal ash, one billion gallons of which flooded Roane County, Tennessee in December 2008. There have been several dirty-energy disasters in the U.S. since then. So where does the "coal is cheap" meme come from?

A deeper look at the true of cost of coal reveals something that is anything but cheap. The most recent example comes from the land of Honest Abe. In Taylorville, Illinois, Tenaska Energy has pushed a proposal for a $4 billion coal plant. The cost, at $212.73 per megawatt-hour, would far exceed a clean alternative, like a wind-energy project at $88.80 to $121.97 per megawatt-hour. Who says this? The Illinois Commerce Commission, an agency of a major coal-producing state.

Like many coal plant proposals, this one is meeting stiff local resistance. While Tenaska claims to be a jobs creator, opponents are rightly pointing out that building clean energy would create more jobs and avoid rate shock.

Cheap? Clean? Big coal is out of flattering adjectives that pass the truth test. Which is why activists are battling new coal plants all over the country and winning.

As I have mentioned on this blog before, the Environmental Protection Agency is currently holding public hearings at sites around the country to hear your input on draft regulations for the disposal of toxic coal ash. This week’s blog post comes from Sierra Student Coalition Apprentice Margaret Hoerath, who writes about an activist who travelled to the coal ash hearing in Virginia earlier this week.

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“This is a bureaucratic mini-Katrina because FEMA doesn’t know what’s going on here,” said James McGrath, a citizen from Giles County in Southwest Virginia, where a coal ash disposal site is located.

Coal ash is the toxic byproduct left over after burning coal and contains elevated levels of dangerous poisons such as mercury, lead, and arsenic. The Cumberland Park Project, essentially a coal ash disposal site dressed up as a real estate development project, is prompting concerns from local citizens like McGrath.

There have been dozens of documented cases where coal ash has contaminated surface water or groundwater in at least 23 states, according to a 2007 EPA study. There are some places near coal ash disposal sites that have water with levels of heavy metals tens and even hundreds of times above federal drinking water standards (U.S. EPA, Coal Combustion Waste Damage Case Assessments, July 9, 2007). McGrath points out that the disposal site is in a 100 year floodplain and is “unlined,” which allows toxins from the coal ash to leak into the area’s groundwater and potentially into someone’s drinking water downriver.

McGrath is particularly concerned about the lack of public participation in the approval process for the project, and the fact that the county administration dodged the proper Federal Emergency Management Administration permitting process by misrepresenting the materials to be used at the site on their application. The administration told FEMA that they were using dirt fill materials instead of specifying that that they were using toxic coal ash from American Electric Power. By misrepresenting the materials to be used on their application, the Cumberland Park Project was able to circumvent the local public hearing process that should have been required.

For McGrath, a 60 year old veteran who was with the 1st marine division in Vietnam, this process violates his democratic values. McGrath explains that it took him two years and eleven months to get a grip on the ins and outs of the permitting process and to understand all the players and beneficiaries in the project.

“If it was Chinese, I could go to the Mandarin opera and understand it,” McGrath explained. “It’s a labyrinth. [This permitting process is] intentionally done this way to confuse people.”

McGrath explained that it is important to understand the permitting process in order to understand the strategies used to get Cumberland Park approved. McGrath has worked on this issue by asking the key players tough questions and by shedding light on all the decision makers involved. He needed to do a lot of digging to find the information he needed to inform others. He became well-versed in the proposed project and was a major source of information for Concerned Citizens of Giles County, which is the group that was formed directly in response to the Cumberland Park Project. McGrath calls himself a long-time environmental activist and found out about this project through involvement in another local environmental group.

“We need more citizens to get involved in activism,” McGrath said. He said that he wishes young people would take more of a role in their government.

McGrath calls many of the moves that the county and AEP used to usher the project in as “slick.” By providing incorrect information on their FEMA developmental permit application, the county avoided having public hearings and prevented local residents from taking a stand on the project. Despite the fact that many coal ash ponds and disposal sites have been shown to leak over time, the Cumberland Park project is allowed to be built in a floodplain and without a composite liner. Since the project is being touted as a development project where future businesses and buildings could be built, bringing jobs to the area, it is termed a “beneficial use” project and slips under the radar.

Industry lobbyists have aimed to limit public participation and they accomplished this by ensuring that a “beneficial use” clause was part of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality permitting process. The “beneficial use” clause was part of the reason that Giles County did not have to hold any public hearings.

“The lobbyists are intentionally influencing legislation to eliminate public participation,” McGrath says.

Through public participation and pressuring public officials back home, McGrath has shed light on the dark side of the project in an effort to create change. McGrath says working on this issue was like a full time job. After driving five hours from Southwest Virginia to testify at the Washington DC Environmental Protection Agency coal ash hearing on August. 30th, McGrath now plans to stop working on the issue. He wants to let the issue take a life of its own and devote more time to his woodworking jobs, tending his property and spending time with his family.

“I’m going to go back to being a grandparent," he said. "I haven’t seen one of my grandchildren for a third of their life.”

The Washington DC hearing McGrath attended was the first of seven hearings nationwide that are being held to evaluate regulations regarding the disposal of coal ash. See http://www.sierraclub.org/coal/coalash/ for more information and to find out how you can tell the EPA what you think.