A new report by the Environmental Integrity Project finds unsafe groundwater contamination at the overwhelming majority of the nation’s coal-burning power plants, and documents dangerous pollution at four the five coal-burning power plants in Arkansas.
The Arkansas Chapter of the Sierra Club offers a roundup:
*SWEPCO’s Flint Creek coal-burning plant in Benton County, which reported exceeding safe levels of arsenic, cobalt, and molybdenum;
*Entergy’s White Bluff coal-burning plant in Jefferson County, which reported twice the safe levels of beryllium and boron, five times the safe level of cobalt, six times the safe level of lithium, four times the safe level molybdenum, along with an excessive level of sulfate;
*SWEPCO’s Turk coal-burning power plant, which reported three times the safe level of lithium.
*Entergy’s Independence coal-burning plant in Independence County, which reported excessive levels of boron
In response to this report, the Arkansas Sierra Club Director Glen Hooks issued the following statement in a press release:
This report underscores what the Sierra Club has been saying for years: dirty coal is destructive across the entire fuel cycle—from the time it’s mined, to the time it’s burned, and to the time its coal ash is disposed of.
Toxic coal ash is a big problem across the country and right here in Arkansas. Four of our five dirty coal plants, by their own self-reported data, show that they have created serious groundwater contamination problems. Three of those plants—SWEPCO’s Flint Creek along with Entergy’s White Bluff and Independence—are almost forty years old and all three of those have unsafe levels of toxic pollutants found in nearby groundwater.
Incredibly, despite all these problems, the Trump administration is trying to roll back coal ash protections. Our communities need more protections from toxic coal ash, not less—this report shows that definitively.
Mammoth coal ash disasters have happened multiple times in our region in recent years. Today’s report is no less dramatic. Nearly every coal burning power plant in the country has polluted nearby groundwater.
We call on our leaders to act immediately and to protect our communities with an urgency. While coal-burning power plants are retiring at a rapid pace, their toxic legacy remains in dangerous coal ash storage dumps. We need action to properly regulate these toxic sites, increase monitoring to include nearby wells and surface water, and keep our communities safe.