Front Porch Blog

Who Cares About Coal Ash? “Have A Sip, Take a Dip, Eat Some Fish”

Yesterday, we wrote about a bluff containing coal ash pond breaking, allowing a football field chunk of debris into Lake Michigan. According to a We Energies spokesman “it is probable that some of the material that washed into the lake is coal ash”.

The dangers of coal ash have been made apparent through the coal ash disaster which spilled over a billion tons of coal ash into the Emory River in December 2008. This disaster prompted the EPA to study the issue. They found that there were several dozen high-hazard structurally-insufficient coal ash dam across the country, and initiated a rule-making on how to handle coal ash.

Coal ash is the toxic by-product of coal-burning, and there are hundreds of coal ash ponds littering the country. North Carolina tops the list of high-hazard dams, with 12 coal ash dams from the French Broad River in Western North Carolina to Cape Fear River in eastern North Carolina.

Rachel Maddow covers the coal ash pond wall break, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives’ vote on H.R. 2273, which would block the EPA’s efforts to protect communities from this danger.

Unfortunately what she failed to do is to mention that a virtually identical bill has been introduced in the Senate. After watching this video, please email your Senator and ask them to oppose S.1751 and stand up for our waterways and safety.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

With Colombian roots, a Philadelphia, Pa.-childhood, and more than a decade in Florida before joining Appalachian Voices, Sandra served as AV's North Carolina campaign coordinator and driving force behind the Red, White & Water campaign from 2007 to 2013.


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One COMMENT
  1. sdwesley3 says:

    I believe we can help! We represent a bio source system, developed overseas, that has a world wide patent, and can eliminate fly ash / coal ash, even garbage, animal waste, sludge, and petroleum waste, while capturing Co2 and producing 3 renewable energy sources. Our technology can thermal chemically process, the fly ash, (or waste) and convert it to electricity, oxygen, and methanol and we have proven this since 2003. All this with ZERO CARBON EMISSIONS!

    Our first plant was erected in Serbia in 2003 to help the government there recover from the ravishes of war and NATO bombing. There, it was able to produce the three sources mentioned above, with the electricity funneled back into the grid, and the methanol used to fuel their stoves, heat their homes, and utilize for their automobiles and trucks.

    We have recently sold a system to Saudi Arabia for the use of petroleum waste and they have plans to build a 2 GW plant to produce millions and millions of gallons of methanol from the waste. A 20 MW system produces 24 million gallons of methanol on an 8 hour 5 day work week. Price of methanol currently is about $1.36 per gallon. Our thoughts are to have the methanol integrated with gasoline and chemically restructured to meet the oil demands of the future. Yet, our system also produces quite a bit of ELECTRICITY WHICH CAN BE FUNNELED INTO YOUR GRID, oxygen too.

    FYI ~ Our system is a prefab system that can be transported by train, or flat bed truck and it consists of 4 cells. These cells filter PMs, NOx, SOx, and Co2 and convert to methanol by filtering in steam to take the syngas and reform it to produce methanol.

    All in all, we can create jobs, eliminate fly ash ~ coal ash, lower or eliminate Co2 emissions, capture without burying in the ground the Co2 from your stacks and convert to three renewable energy sources. These sources will then produce tremendous revenue streams for the electric company! We will also provide scientific and engineering backup to our system and can demonstrate models in Europe or visit a proposed site in the USA, if your organization is interested in this wonderful concept. Also, please feel free to visit us on Facebook at :
    https://www.facebook.com/mpbiomass

    Scott Wesley
    Principal / MP BioMass

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