Mar 12 2009
This Coal Spill Sends a Message to D.C.
Another coal plant ash spill happened on the morning of March 8th: 4,000 gallons of coal ash spilled out of a hole in a pipe carrying it to an ash pond, according to initial reports, into the Potomac River. Coal ash is a dirty sludge mess of toxic chemicals, some of it possibly cancer-causing, and some of this ash went into the Potomac River, which could make its way down to the Washington D.C. area. What a message that would send to the White House. This is the third coal ash spill in only a few months. Did these used to happen before the media didn’t report them?
This spill happened from a coal plant that was dedicated to the New Page paper mill in Maryland. This company has three pipelines that go out from its power plant carrying coal plant waste. These pipes go over the Potomic River and dump the sludge into an ash pond. This is what the industry calls “clean coal”.
The reference to clean coal is an industry fantasy: they have put scrubbers on some plants that get the sulfer out of the emissions, but that’s about it. The CO2 is still being pumped out with no way to capture it, and the toxins and mercury still remain in the byproducts of burning coal for energy. In other words, coal plants are death factories, and they should all be shut down for good. (”Death factories ” is the terminology of climate scientist James Hansen).
