Poor Alabama county banks on coal ash dumping

[IDemo]

By JAY REEVES (AP) – 2 hours ago

UNIONTOWN, Ala. — Two-lane roads lined with weeds and trees seem to stretch forever in Perry County, where thousands of residents are poor even by Alabama standards and they don't produce much for the outside world besides timber and catfish.

What Perry County has, though, is vacant land — hundreds of square miles of it. And that provided more than enough space for a massive landfill that critics say has made the county a dumping ground for coal ash from the nation's largest public utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Perry County will be the final resting place for millions of tons of dredged coal ash from an environmental disaster 300 miles away. The first freight trains loaded with the gray muck, containing toxic elements such as arsenic and lead, are rumbling into the 976-acre municipal landfill that's allowed to take trash from 16 states.

Officials say the landfill will generate more than $3 million for the county by accepting coal ash from a Dec. 22 ash spill at a TVA plant in Kingston, Tenn.

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