CItizens Affected By Coal Ash Travel to Washington

Residents from Alabama, Oklahoma, and Ohio will meet with staff of the White House Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) on Monday to discuss the pending regulations on coal ash.

Tim Tanksley, Elisa Young, and John Wathen, represent three of seven individuals from communities across the country who joined together this week in a letter to President Obama’s “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein, inviting him to meet about the proposed protections on coal ash.

All seven individuals had already sent personal letters to Sunstein, recounting their experiences with coal ash pollution in their communities, and asking him to come see for himself how it has poisoned drinking water, endangered people’s health, and caused home values to plummet. They say they have not yet received replies to their invitation for a visit.

"Coal ash is a dangerous substance that hurts individuals and devastates communities," said Rachael Belz of Ohio Citizen Action. "Since Mr. Sunstein did not respond to the invitations from the neighbors of the coal ash facilities, we will take our case directly to his office in Washington.”

While in town, the group would also like to meet with other congressional and regulatory leaders about regulating toxic coal ash.

Coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of burning coal, has been dumped into communities across America, contaminating groundwater and drinking water with toxic metals including arsenic, mercury, lead and boron.

Last October, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules to regulate coal ash disposal, but the new protections have been stalled for over five months at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the office charged with reviewing them for the President, which Sunstein runs. Since his office received the proposed regulations on Oct. 16, 2009, Sunstein’s staff has met with representatives of the coal and fly ash industries more than 20 times, according to Ohio Citizen Action. They add that Sunstein has not made any public trips to see the real-life effects of coal ash on communities across America.

Below are a few excerpts from the individual letters that citizens sent to Sunstein.

Tim Tanksley, of Bokoshe, Oklahoma, wrote: “The fly ash is in our air and in our water; it is flowing into our creeks, streams, and eventually into the Arkansas River. Among the 20 households nearest the pit, there are at least 14 people with cancer.”

John Wathen, of Uniontown Alabama, the community that has been receiving coal ash from the cleanup of the 1.1 billion-gallon spill in December 2008 in Harriman, Tenn., wrote: "Trucks unload the ash within 200 feet away from people’s homes. They are also intentionally washing it off train cars and trucks into a stream… The landfill was pumping this toxic leachate over roads and down into public ditches at night.” John can also describe how some residents hang rags soaked in Pine-Sol in their windows just so that they can avoid the smell and get to sleep at night.

Elisa Young, of Meigs County, Ohio wrote: "They have lined our kids’ running tracks with power plant waste, filled in roads with it along the Ohio River causing huge fish kills, and even made cattle feeders out of it.”

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