Coal Ash Toxins Found In Groundwater @ 9/9 TVA Sites Now Being Tested

[hatrack]

A new report says groundwater contamination from coal ash has been found at Gallatin and eight of the nine other Tennessee Valley Authority fossil power plant sites where testing is being done.

Levels of toxic substances found at the Gallatin plant site in Sumner County and at the Cumberland site, 50 miles northwest of Nashville, are high enough that they could create a health hazard, the report says. Beryllium, cadmium and nickel levels are above drinking water standards at Gallatin, as are arsenic, selenium and vanadium at Cumberland.

One major surprise also showed up in the review by TVA’s Office of Inspector General: For more than a decade, the TVA had been finding substances in groundwater at its Allen coal-fired plant in Memphis that indicated toxic metals could be leaking from a coal ash pond there.

Arsenic above today’s allowable levels was found repeatedly in a monitoring well on the site, which is in a sensitive location. The plant and its ash ponds lie above a deep, high-quality aquifer that supplies drinking water to Memphis and nearby areas. “I was not aware of this until today,” Chuck Head, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s senior director for land programs, said Friday after The Tennessean provided a copy of the TVA document.

EDIT

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110725/NEWS11/307250034/Coal-ash-taints-groundwater-at-TVA-sites-report-finds

[txlibdem]

1. Coal power poisoning our drinking water... again. Where are the anti-nukers on this toxic outrage???

Why do we almost never hear the anti-nuke crowd screaming their usual thousand posts per day when it's about coal pollution, oil pollution or natural gas pollution. Arsenic is deadly. It will kill you, in smaller quantities it can kill children or pets.

Where are they? Why don't they care about poisoned water? Gosh, it seems like they have a single-minded agenda, ending nuclear power. But if we end nuclear power won't we need to have *more* coal power plants or natural gas fracking. The answer is absolutely yes.

Well, this poster says we need to END coal, END oil, END natural gas before they make our once beautiful nation a steaming cesspool of toxic filth. We need to end fossil fuel use before stopping the use of nuclear power. That's a fact!

[Nihil]

2. You've answered your own question with your second paragraph. (n/t)

[txlibdem]

3. Sure seems like it

I have never trusted a person whose world is too small to hold more than one thing.

The problems we face today were not "solved" when the anti-nukers succeeded in the 1970s to end all new nuclear power plants. Where they?

[hunter]

4. Arsenic in drinking water...

"According to a 1999 study by the National Academy of Sciences, arsenic in drinking water causes bladder, lung and skin cancer, and may cause kidney and liver cancer. The study also found that arsenic harms the central and peripheral nervous systems, as well as heart and blood vessels, and causes serious skin problems. It also may cause birth defects and reproductive problems."

http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/qarsenic.asp

[txlibdem]

5. And the bad news: Arsenic is only 1 of dozens of toxic chemicals from coal

It's sickening to think that the coal industry is polluting the water we all need to drink without anyone in government looking into it, no fines, no regulations they have to follow (in most states) and no containment of their toxic emissions.

Just think, what if a nuclear power plant spokesman came to a public meeting and stated their intention to allow toxic and radioactive elements to spew right out the smokestack and the rest will be collected and dumped into open pits somewhere near the plant. Don't you think that everyone... and I mean *everyone* would tear that person limb from limb. Yet that is exactly what the coal industry is doing each and every day and nobody bats an eye over it.

Why the double standard?

http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/

[Nihil]

6. Kick for a response that says it all. (n/t)

:grr: