Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, Sierra Club: 45 Americans living near toxic coal ash dump sites deliver message to Congress, administration about need for tougher regulation now

COAL ASH HILL DAY IN D.C.

Americans from Nine States Advance Public Health and Safety Agenda for Regulating Coal Ash Disposal

WASHINGTON, D.C.///April 12, 2011///Concerned citizens from nine states – Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, and West Virginia – participated today in meetings on Capitol Hill and with various federal agencies to tell their stories of living near coal ash dump sites.

In the meetings on Capitol Hill and with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the citizens demanded action to deal with health problems and environmental water contamination from coal-ash disposal ponds, landfills and other dump sites. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) declined a meeting with the citizens.

The meetings were coordinated by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club with the overarching goal of emphasizing the need for a strong, federally enforceable coal ash rule that provides minimum standards applicable in all 50 states, and one that requires the eventual phase out of coal ash ponds, which leach high levels of toxic pollutants into water sources.

Jeff Stant of Environmental Integrity Project, hosting many of the coal ash citizen-advocates in Washington, D.C., said, “The objective of these meetings is to educate decision-makers on Capitol Hill about real-world impacts that result from the failure of states to establish or enforce basic common-sense safeguards at coal ash sites. Lawmakers are being told repeatedly about the stigma on “recycling” of coal ash wastes that could occur from a strong RCRA subtitle C regulation and the economic harm that this regulation will cause to the coal industry, utilities, and cement and asphalt manufacturers. But they have lost sight of the harm to people that is occurring when states allow coal combustion wastes to be dumped in almost any fashion into unlined ponds, below the groundwater table, in uncovered piles, pits, or low areas, unmonitored and with no cleanup standards.”

Debbie Havens of Chester, West Virginia said, “I am here today in Washington, D.C. with 44 of my fellow Americans, including my husband, to remind our elected officials in Congress that largely unregulated coal ash dump sites continue to pose huge a risk to the environment. Coal ash ponds are large-scale environmental disasters waiting to happen, and they pose a major public health threat to everyone who lives in close proximity. It saddens me that no one from this diverse group of Americans from nine states – all who reside near coal ash waste sites – can pinpoint any sensible reason aside from partisan politics for the delays by Congress and EPA in crafting and approving a new rule to regulate and safeguard existing toxic coal ash collection ponds. If the TVA coal ash spill in Kingston, Tennessee was not a wake-up call, what will it take to get our lawmakers in Washington to move on this issue and protect the public and the environment from coal ash? We are here today to find

out and to make our voices heard on these important issues.”

Nearly two and a half years after the catastrophic TVA spill in Kingston, TN of over 1 billion gallons of coal ash, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has still not delivered on her 2009 promise to draft new coal ash regulations. The 40+ Americans visiting Capitol Hill and Administration leaders next week all have homes, property, family members or friends and their personal health at stake. They believe strongly that there is no reason why a final rule cannot be published in 2011.

Moreover, the coal ash waste recovered from the Kingston, TN spill was hauled by train to Perry County, AL (a state that requires no regulatory oversight of coal ash disposal in landfills) and placed in the midst of a poor, rural community populated mostly by African-American residents. Residents in Perry County have complained to U.S. EPA that their ground water has been contaminated, and adjacent farm land and farm animals have been forced to drink and use water now contaminated by hazardous substances leached from the unlined and unmonitored coal ash landfill.

ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL INTEGRITY PROJECT

The Environmental Integrity Project (http://www.environmentalintegrity.org) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization established in March of 2002 by former EPA enforcement attorneys to advocate for effective enforcement of environmental laws. EIP has three goals: 1) to provide objective analyses of how the failure to enforce or implement environmental laws increases pollution and affects public health; 2) to hold federal and state agencies, as well as individual corporations, accountable for failing to enforce or comply with environmental laws; and 3) to help local communities obtain the protection of environmental laws.

ABOUT EARTHJUSTICE

Earthjustice (http://www.earthjustice.org) is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment.

ABOUT SIERRA CLUB

The Sierra Club is America’s oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization. Inspired by nature, the Sierra Club members are 1.4 million of your friends and neighbors, working together to protect our communities and the planet.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Patrick Mitchell, for Environmental Integrity Project, at (703) 276-3266 or pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com; Raviya Ismail, Earthjustice, (202) 667-4500 ext. 221; and Oliver Bernstein of Sierra Club at (512) 477-2152 or oliver.bernstein@apps.sierraclub.org.