View Ameren’s Coal Power Plant in a larger map
Jeffery Tomich had a good article last month on the leakage from the coal ash pond at a coal burning power plant near to our school. While the leakage appears to pose no real risk to us, it is a serious environmental issue at a local site that a number of students drive by on the way to school.
I’ve annotated the following excerpt from the article based on the questions my students asked when we talked about the it.
Since Since 1992, a coal ash pond next to the Ameren power plant here has been … hemorrhaging up to 35 gallons a minute [into the local groundwater].
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At many [other] sites, trace metals in coal ash including lead, mercury, arsenic and selenium have been found in groundwater at levels that exceed drinking water standards.
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In 2007, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report identified 63 sites in 26 states where the water was contaminated by heavy metals from coal ash dumps. That was more than a year before an estimated 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash sludge escaped an impoundment in Kingston, Tenn. The sludge spread across 300 acres, and 3 million cubic yards spilled into a river.
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The waste is created from burning coal to create electricity. At Labadie’s ash ponds, it’s composed of fly ash, a fine, talc-like powder that’s captured by filters in the plant’s stacks to reduce pollutants released into the air, and bottom ash, a coarser material that falls to the bottom of coal boilers.
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a report prepared by Robert Criss, a Washington University professor, identified several dozen private wells along the bluffs near Labadie Bottoms that could be at risk of contamination. Contaminants could infiltrate from shallow alluvial soils to the deeper Ozark aquifer [(see also USGS, 2009)] tapped by residents for drinking water, according to the report.
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Ameren believes the leaks don’t pose an environmental threat. But because of ongoing concerns, and because the EPA has asked the utility to monitor them, Ameren will make repairs to the ash pond by the end of the year— Tomich (2011): Leaks from Ameren toxic waste pond in Labadie stir fears in St. Louis Today.
More information from the local environmental group, Labadie Environmental Organization:
The ash overflow in Tennessee: see Dewan, 2008.