Sierra Club pushes EPA to go tough on coal ash
March 17, 2014, 02:37 pm
By Timothy Cama
The Sierra Club on Monday launched a new ad campaign aimed at
pressuring the Environmental Protection
Agency into adopting strong regulations against dumping coal ash into
water.
The ad campaign, dubbed
“Thirsty?”, warns that coal ash could pollute drinking water, citing spills in West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. The ads urge the EPA to protect
against such pollution, which they said contains arsenic, mercury and lead.
“Americans deserve water we can
drink, not water that makes us sick,” Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra
Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement Monday. “The West Virginia water crisis, the Duke Energy coal ash spill and the
[Tennessee Valley Authority] coal ash disaster of 2008 all underscore the
inadequacy of current state and federal safeguards. Now is the time to act
swiftly in order to protect our health and waterways from coal’s toxic legacy.”
The EPA started to write
regulations prohibiting coal ash dumping in 2008 but has not finished the
process. The agency agreed to finish the regulations by December to settle a
lawsuit brought by environmental groups and Native American tribes.
“We urge the EPA to move quickly
to issue strong, enforceable protections that end all dangerous wet storage of
coal ash, permanently removing the threat of coal ash spills,” Hitt said in her
statement. “We can't afford another Dan River disaster,” she said, referring to
a February spill at a Duke Energy facility in North Carolina.
The American Coal Council has
opposed regulating coal ash, which is a byproduct of coal-fueled power plants.
The coal group has called such regulations unscientific and rash, and said the
negative impact would be “widespread and immediate.”
The Sierra Club ads will be
appearing in Washington Metrorail stations and on North Carolina-based
websites.
Sierra Club
Reality
Coalition is a partner with the Sierra
Club, the Natural Resources Defense
Council, and opposes coal use in the Clean
coal debate.
Note: Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Aspen Institute (think
tank), and the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
William
A. Nitze is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), and was
the assistant administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
James
E. Rogers is a trustee at the Aspen Institute (think tank), a
trustee the Brookings Institution (think
tank), and the chairman & president & CEO for the Duke Energy Corporation.
Lee
H. Hamilton is an honorary trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank), and a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Patrick L. McCrory
is a member of the Homeland Security
Advisory Council, and a governor for the North Carolina state government.
No comments:
Post a Comment