Keeping Our Drinking Water Free From Contamination

While the effects of mountaintop don’t directly affect us in this region, some of the environmental effects are the same. In our area, our drinking water supply is contaminated from another byproduct of Coal.

In this area, CCW(coal combustion waste), the leftover ash produced from burning coal is being disposed of by placing it in abandoned mines. Not only is it being used as fill in deep mines, but it is also being disposed of in surface mines that are being “reclaimed”.

According to
Earth Justice ,

Disposing of coal ash in mines is contaminating water supplies throughout Pennsylvania, according to a report released today by Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Earthjustice. In 10 of 15 mines examined across the state, groundwater and streams near areas where coal ash, or coal combustion waste, was placed had levels of arsenic, lead, cadmium and selenium and other pollutants above safe standards.

“Disposing of coal combustion waste in these mines is threatening water supplies all over the state,” said Jeff Stant, director of the Pennsylvania Minefill Research Project at the Clean Air Task Force. “If the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection won’t act now to stop these dangers, the US EPA should step in to protect the residents of Pennsylvania who live near coal ash mine fills.”

This does affect me as one of the major fill sites is about 15 miles away from me, located at the old Earnest Mine in Rayne/White townships. To add to this problem, some of the coal being mined for fuel is “crop” coal. Crop coal is much less efficient, and produces far more waste than good bituminous coal.

You can read more about the damage being done to our watersheds in the study posted here:
New Study Reports Pennsylvania Groundwater Contamination from Coal Ash .

I read a post on The Rasch Outdoor Chronicles titled: Taking It To The House that made me write this post. He provides a nice email template to use for emailing your Congressman and asking them to support the Clean Water Protection Act, H.R. 2169. What more can you ask for? He has done more than half of the work for you to email your rep. If you care about the quality of the water in your area, I urge you to get over to his site and use the template!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 6:11 pm and is filed under environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.