Legalectric

What happens to coal ash?  It’s shoveled out, brought to a “ash disposal facility” where it goes into the ground, and from there???  We’re finally learning that it often leaches into the ground, down into the groundwater. Thanks to EarthJustice for posting the raw data — no plants listed for Minnesota:

• View complete data table as spreadsheet
• View complete data table as a PDF

Scroll down for their newer reports.

It’s not news, though, and has been the subject of research for a long time, this study from 1980:

Effects of Coal-Ash Leachate on Ground Water Quality

What did they look for and find?

So yeah, this is something to be concerned about…

There are coal ash and other ash “disposal facilities” everywhere, usually very close to where the ash is generated, here in Red Wing we have an ash dump, ash from two old coal burners at the NSP/Xcel garbage burners on the south end of town, and a now closed city garbage burner, visible on the map above, at the lower right corner of the black striped “Water Tank Mound Area” and beyond, that complex there.  The City garbage burner was closed not long ago (YEAAAAA!!!), but the NSP/Xcel former coal burners, now garbage burner, remain burning.

(The Air Permits for those 2 burners have been expired for a decade or more, but that’s another story, covered before and to be covered again, but not today.)

The coal ash and garbage ash has been piling up for decades.  A couple of years ago there was a city and Xcel scam launched here in Red Wing, “ash mining.”