The gift that keeps on giving:
"101 coal ash sites sit on terrain where the agency estimates at least a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year — what is frequently known as a 100-year storm."
"Flood-risk information wasn’t available for every site, and consistent documentation didn’t exist for many long-dormant coal ash sites, so POLITICO eliminated dozens of locations from its results. The results also don’t account for some utilities’ ongoing efforts to remove their coal ash. And some FEMA maps POLITICO reviewed were last updated in the 1970s."
"Duke Energy said adhering to the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality's order to excavate six sites near waterways would cost $5 billion. Dominion Energy’s cleanup at four Virginia sites will cost $3 billion under a deal brokered with the state. "
"The 2008 spill that sparked a push for federal rules, at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in Kingston, Tenn., cost $1.2 billion to clean up and has been linked to the deaths of dozens of workers who contracted cancer and other diseases after responding to the disaster. Damage from a 2014 spill on the Dan River in North Carolina reached $395 million, according to the U.S. Forest Service."
"extreme precipitation spiked 42 percent in the Midwest and 27 percent in the Southeast between 1958 and 2016, and said the Midwest and parts of the Southeast will see another 40-plus percent increase by 2100 if emissions trajectories go unchanged."
"Existing flood map boundaries do not account for future flood risk"
"Drinking water wells in rural areas that tap into groundwater already show contamination from chemicals such as arsenic, lithium, cobalt and radium near 24 coal ash sites across 13 states"
"Groundwater contamination for pollutants such as molybdenum, arsenic, thallium, lithium, selenium, cobalt and radium also exceeded EPA health safety standards at 91 percent of 265 power plants"
"the Trump administration also decided against requiring companies to prove they have the money to clean up future coal ash spills."
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/26/toxic-waste-climate-change-worse-1672998sidd