Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Bogelbaum here Shortly after Hurricane Matthews stormed through North Carolina in October, swelling the Noose River to a level never seen before. One Matthew Star ventured out on the river to see some of the damage himself. In the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with Star, the Upper Noose River keeper for Sound Rivers, a nonprofit that monitors and protects the Noose and Tar
Pamlico River basins. He said, well, when the flood water receded, I was out on the boat doing a patrol on one of the inactive ash ponds, and it really looked like a winter wonderland. Here was this white, very fine ash up in the trees, on the water, on the trunks, on the leaves. It was just everywhere. If you just slightly bumped a tree, it would just rain down this very fine ash. Fast forward two years later, not a
single shovel of ash has been removed. The ash Star speaks of is whole ash, an ecological can that the state, in the whole country has been kicking down the road for decades. More than thirty thousand tons of coal ash spilled into the Dan River, the two fourteen mile or three kilometer river that crosses the Virginia North Carolina line eight times and something the locals came to call the
heartbreak on the Dan. How Stuff Works also spoke with Brian Williams, the Virginia program manager for the Dan River Basin Association, who was one of the first on the scene. He said the river ran gray for weeks after that. People still ask me, is it's safe to go waiting in the river. I don't know. I can't say the same thing about it that I used to be able to. Coal lash is just what it says on the box. It's what's left over from burning coal. The coal consumption
has dropped dramatically in recent years. It peaked in two thousand seven, and the electric power sector used less coal in twenty seventeen than in any year since nine three, but power plants throughout the nation still use a staggering amount of it. About seven hundred and seventeen million tons of coal were consumed in twenty seventeen, most used to
produce electricity. About thirty percent of the nation's energy still comes from coal, and of course millions and millions of tons of coal ash are left over from when the US was more coal dependent. The Environmental Protection Agency or e p A says that coal ash is one of the largest types of industrial waste produced in the United States. More than a hundred and thirty million tons of the
stuff was generated in fourteen alone. Though there are some uses for the ash to strengthen things like wallboard and concrete, Mainly, most is discarded into dry landfills or wet ponds near the power plants where it's produced as it has been for decades, and where it just sits until that is something happens a flooding river or lake nearby, a dam break,
and then catastrophe rivers and streams the air. Coal burning plants are used to cool machinery and produce steam, but they also provide a way out for the ash if it's not disposed of properly, and the problem with coal ash getting loose in the environment is that it is, in a word, toxic, to quote the Organization Physicians for
Social Responsibility. Coal ash typically contains heavy metals, including arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and selenium, as well as aluminum antimony, barium, beryllium, boron, chlorine, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, ballium, vanadium, and zinc. If eaten, drunk or inhaled, these toxicants can cause cancer and nervous system impacts, such as cognitive defects,
developmental delays, and behavioral problems. They can also cause heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastro intestinal illness, birth defects, and impaired bone growth in children. The worst coal ash spill ever came in December of two eight, when a dike at the storage site at the Tennessee Valley Authorities Kingston Fossil Fuel power plant burst, releasing five point four million cubic yards of wet ash into the
surrounding land. The sludge covered some three hundred acres that's a hundred and twenty hectors, befouling land and waters and prompting a year's long cleanup. More than thirty workers charged with getting rid of the coal ash have already died, allegedly from long term exposure to the toxins. At least two hundred more are sick or dying lawsuits are pending. North Carolina has had a few spills after the Dan
River disaster. Rains from Hurricane Matthew in twenty six and Hurricane Florence in September caused kalash to spill into other North Carolina rivers, though Duke Energy, the state's largest utility, says the damage from the Hurricane Florence spill is minimal. A statement released in September by the Upper Noose River
Keeper and Waterkeeper Alliance disputes that claim. An analysis by Pace Analytical not only found levels of arsenic nearly eighteen times higher than the North Carolina standard for drinking water supply and fish consumption, but it also found elevated levels of lead and other heavy metals in the water. Williams said, are we going to see twenty years from now heavy metals in shellfish? Who knows? Probably, We just can't say
right away. We can definitely say that concentrated heavy metals are not good in the environment, and this is not a problem limited to the southeast. According to the e p A kalash disposal occurs at over a thousand sites around the US, and those are just the active sites. As many as one thousand additional coal ash disposal sites exist around the country. Some of the ashes stored in pits where it's mixed with water, which helps to keep
the dusty ash settled, and some mistored dry. Some of these sites are covered and some of the pits are lined. Environmentalists note that even when the sites aren't flooded or retaining walls aren't compromised, the minerals in the ash can still seep into water tables and infect drinking water. Williams said, we know everything's not okay. Just sweeping this under the rug is not cutting it. What's going to fix this is good ideas and admitting, yeah, this is a problem
and we've got to figure out a solution. Utilities, fearful of the huge costs associated with cleaning up these sites, favor ceiling off the landfills and the ponds that hold coal ash. But that doesn't remove the problem. It only kicks the can further down the road. The star expl and this isn't without a fix. The fix is to excavate all of the coal ash. Once you remove all the coal ash, the threat is removed. Excavating the coal ash, putting it away from our water resources. And putting it
into aligned landfill. Your kitchen garbage has more strict restrictions on it. That's what you have to do. The fix is to remove it. A rule dictating stricter federal standards for coal ash disposal passed in under the Obama administration was eased in by the Trump administration, but a US Court of Appeals decision later not only threatens to gut the Trump rollbacks, but calls on the e p A to pass even tougher rules than called for during the Obama era. Disposal of all the coal residue is going
to take years and years to pull off. All will plants across the country continue to produce it. That means coal ash will be a problem for everybody for the foreseeable future. Today's episode is based on the article the Deadly Problem of coal ash on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by John Donovan. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com and
is produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts to my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.