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Duke Energy currently has around 150 million tons of coal waste stored in 4,500 acres of ash dumps, of which about 70% are in North Carolina. In the aftermath of the Dan River spill, the company admitted cutting corners and ignoring engineers' requests for better monitoring at the site, and agreed to pay $102 million in fines and environmental restitution fees.
America's coal plants produce 140 million tons of ash each year, making it the country's second-largest industrial waste stream. The vast majority of that ash is blended with water to make it easier to move, and then pumped into impoundments that are often little more than holes in the ground.
There are currently more than 1,100 such impoundments in the US, of which almost half lack any kind of lining to prevent seepage, and every state that has coal-ash impoundments has also had EPA-verified water contamination incidents linked to the sites.
That's troubling because coal ash contains toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, selenium, and other agents that have been linked to cancer, learning disabilities, neurological disorders, birth defects, reproductive failure, asthma, and other illnesses.
According to an EPA risk assessment, people who live within a mile of an unlined coal-ash facility have a 1 in 50 risk of cancer due to arsenic exposure alone, without even considering the other toxins to which they're potentially exposed.
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