Coal Ash Essay

However, Edward’s contract was not renewed after this complaint. (Paynter 94) Soon after, the Washington Post exposed this cover up to the public. (Paynter 94) As a result of this exposed story, the EPA advised people to flush their water lines. (Paynter 94) However, the EPA’s health advice “actually increased [lead] exposure” (Paynter 94) to the whole water line. Soon after, congressional investigations found that “hundreds, maybe thousands, of children had been affected [because] municipal authority in DC had disregarded test results for years” (Paynter 94). This catastrophe is almost similar to the situation that occurred in Flint. It was a result of government back tracking and ignoring common warning signs. However, this occurred during 2003, before the massive explosion of mobile devices and the Internet. There was little public response unlike the incident in Flint that occurred a decade later.

What is asbestos you ask? Well asbestos is the name for a group of naturally occurring silicate minerals that can be separated into fibers. The fibers are strong, durable, and resistant to heat and fire. They are also long, thin, and flexible, so that they can even be woven into cloth. Because of these qualities, asbestos has been used in thousands if consumer, industrial, maritime, automotive, scientific and building products. During the twentieth century, some 30 million tons of asbestos were used in industrial sites, homes, schools, shipyards and commercial buildings in the United States.

Nuclear waste is a radioactive waste that is dangerous, and a fair percentage of people would agree on this topic. However, is it really dangerous or is it just harmful to an extent? In society, many debates are held over trying to prove to the world that this substance is harmful. In the essay, “Nuclear Waste,” Muller states clearly that he sides with the anti-nuke of the debate and how he pinpoints the facts of nuclear waste with great persuasion. Yet, it is uncertain whether Muller clearly has a good argument and/or answers the questions that many people linger to know.

Have you ever enjoyed walking, eating, or shopping by the riverfront, in downtown Green Bay? It is currently being covered by coal dust daily and no one is stopping it. Coal piles have disrupted people around the riverfront since 1978. The Koch company has recently sold the controversial Coal Piles to a coal industry family in Pennsylvania, this could be what the locals have been waiting for as the coal piles could be removed. However, the family has stated that they don’t plan on moving the piles in the future. The Coal piles in downtown Green Bay are ruining land, peoples homes, and is bad for the environment.

Coal Combustion Residuals, often referred to as coal ash, are currently considered exempt wastes under an amendment to RCRA, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. They are residues from the combustion of coal in power plants and captured by pollution control technologies, like scrubbers. Potential environmental concerns from coal ash pertain to pollution from impoundment and landfills leaching into ground water and structural failures of impoundments, like that which occurred at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plant in Kingston, Tennessee. The need for national management criteria was emphasized by the December 2008 spill of CCRs from a surface impoundment near

As far as dumping goes, Tom Fleshman of the Richter Corporation, which happens to be located in the same DNR region as Farnsworth, has assured me that they have seen no repercussions for continuing their dumping practices regardless of the sanctions placed on them. Like Farnsworth, Freedom Power Company dumps wood fly ash on their own property. The difference is that freedom compacts their waste before disposal, but the DNR was not aware of this before writing them a permit to legally do

Natural gas is a fossil fuel that plays a critical role in the demand and supply of energy in the United States. It is considered to be a clean burning transition fuel. Compared to coal and oil, natural gas combustion does not generate as much pollution and is therefore considered an ideal partner for renewable energy resources. Natural gas is extracted from shale formations underground that require horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing – “hydrofracking” or “fracking”. This drilling and extraction method is currently considered a global widespread issue due to the rapid increase in the amount of new gas wells that threatens the quality of water around the source (Entriken, Evans-White, Johnson & Hagenbuch, 2011).

Coal ash is known to contain a number of different toxic metals, the exact content dependent upon the coal it is formed from. Containing this potential pollution hazard is an expensive problem, as approximately 75% of all ash generated is stored in landfills. In these sites, rainwater can leach out toxic metals including mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, molybdenum, lead and selenium. As over 500 million tons of ash are produced each year, there’s an increasing environmental health hazard to the surrounding water systems of these landfills. Pollution can spread to municipal water systems and potentially poison humans. As such, figuring out a better solution to deal with the unused coal ash is of significant importance. Current uses of coal ash primarily include the formation of concrete due the pozzolanic properties of coal

The Buffalo Creek flood of West Virginia is believed to be the most devastating coal relate disaster in West Virginia history. The flood occurred in the Buffalo Creek area of Logan County on February 26, 1972 when three dams broke and released 132 million gallons of water and coal waste known by miners as “gob,” and is a thick sludge-like material. The gob contains many toxic chemicals and pollutants such as mercury and arsenic that are left behind from the coal mining process. The wastewater would lie in settling ponds and dams until it could be properly disposed of. The water that was left over from processing coal would be disposed of in two different ways. Some of the water would be pumped from the dam back to the “tipple”, otherwise

Though, the water by Chemours is still above the threshold set. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina issues a subpoena to the Department of Environmental Quality for all their information on Gen-x, Chemours’ Fayetteville facility, and everything in between. Also on the same day, Governor Cooper expands the authorization of the Science Advisory Board to aid health and environmental officials in deciding acceptable levels of contamination of Gen-x along with other obligations. Workers in the Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services will decide the 11 board members that will take part in this pursuit. In the beginning of August new jobs are being created to help contain and study Gen-x. Both the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services request $2.6 million to these new jobs. Most of the money went to the Department of Environmental Quality for the testing of Gen-x and the 16 new jobs to do the studying. The rest went to the Department of Health and Human Services to analyze the contamination and inform the public of its health risks. Mid-August they asked for more money, but were denied. Legislators said that instead they would like to see money go local groups in Wilmington whose work deals with Gen-x in some way. The day after it was confirmed that all areas in the Cape Fear River, including the discharge site, are below the 140

Coal power is the cheapest fuel to power the ever growing population with Australian mining industry still putting in billions of dollars into a vast amount of coal projects never the less coal power is a fossil fuel, a fuel which takes hundreds of year to form so the future of coal is undetermined. Coal is a reliable power source but one of the many concern with coal is the mining process used to remove it from the ground. Ecological effects are developing worries for the industry, with the carbon emissions possibly contributing to global warming.

“....General Electric Co. is sharply objecting to a new federal plan that would force it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to remove massive amounts of toxic chemicals from the Housatonic River….” (GE and EPA in Dispute, 1). GE has been polluting the Housatonic River for almost 50 years now by releasing toxic chemicals into the water from its Connecticut site. General Electric has also dumped 1.3 million pounds of harmful chemicals into the Hudson River over the course of 30 years. They have rejected many requests to pay for the removal of their pollution to water.

The fly ash and bottom ash, FGD gypsum shall be delivered to ash storage yard .

Hazardous waste and its proper disposal have become a major sociological problem today due to its capability of contaminating the area in which we live and its potential to be lethal to all living things. In order for the United States and the rest of the world to save itself from a potentially life threatening problem they must fix the causes which lead to the improper disposal of hazardous wastes and like materials. Some reasons that hazardous waste has become a problem in the United States today is due to the breakdown in enforcing laws for the proper disposal of such wastes, a lack of initiative on big companies behalf to spend money on proper disposal, and the ease of disposing of such wastes illegally.

Fossil fuels are essential to life on earth as we know it today. Our world would certainly be much different if it weren’t for such seemingly simple things such as coal, oil, and natural gas. These basic elements of life on earth may not seem like a major concern to some people until we put into perspective how they have shaped our world today. Civilizations have been built, economies have risen and crumbled, and even wars have been fought over these precious fossil fuels. However, these fossil fuels serve us in ways we may never truly appreciate, as long as we use them as recklessly as we do now. The major entity about fossil fuels is concerning their longevity and permanence in our world, and we all know, they will be around forever.