Coal Ash: No News Here
Andrew Wheeler during his confirmation hearing
I normally enjoy punching out these blog posts; there’s usually a certain excitement that comes with communicating a message to a world that I believe needs to hear it.
That’s not the case here. It’s my duty to report that, as his first official act, the new EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler has relaxed the environmental standards that formerly restrained the operators of coal-fired power plants from dumping the toxic ash residue into our waterways.
My feeling of ennui here doesn’t derive from the fact that this is terrible news for the health and safety of millions of Americans; there is plenty of bad news, probably even worse, floating all around us, associated with the demise of the American democracy. It’s rather that this was totally predictable; what actually would have made news would have been an act, any act, that actually served to protect the environment and the people Wheeler ostensibly serves.
But, no, his life’s work has been driving profits for the coal companies at the expense of your health; this was as predestined as the sun’s rising in the east tomorrow morning.
Craig,
I’m not sure you’ve actually read the provisions in the ‘ Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016’, nor really understand the impracticability of some 2015 regulations, which if applied in full, would also have prevented fracking technology, a fact conveniently forgotten.
For decades the US Nuclear Industry has been strangled by excessive regulations. The rigid application of long obsolete regulations prevented the US nuclear Industry from investing in technical advances and improvements by imposing impossibly expensive requirements ensuring obtaining approvals took decades, not years and hundreds of millions of dollars with no guarantee of approval if all the conditions were met. Most of the regulations had long ceased to have meaning or value but remained a barrier to progress. As a result, the US nuclear industry became moribund.
Had extreme environmentalist lobbyists had their way, fracking technology and the entire North American oil and gas industry would be non-existent while the US economy would have collapsed.
Instead, natural gas and derivatives are major contributors to reducing industrial pollution, while none of the scary alarmist predictions contained in sensationalist propaganda such as “Gasland” eventuated.
Coal ash does contain minute portions of those scary sounding elements, cobalt, lithium, molybdenum and lead.
Hmmmmm,…. what dreadfully toxic stuff, eh ? Well, not really as terrible as it sounds.
Firstly, coal ash contains only minute portions of lithium which is a naturally occurring mineral essential for human health. Very little of the lithium in coal ash could affect water supply certainly not as much as lithium battery land fill.
Cobalt. Again, while cobalt is an incredibly toxic substance, it’s also the main ingredient in many technologies including solar panels (replacing rare earth iodine) and Lithium-ion batteries should really be called “cobalt batteries ” since the main ingredient is cobalt.
Oh, and cobalt is essential for wind power ! Yep, Cobalt is a key ingredient in the manufacture of Wind Turbines.
Safe cobalt disposal isn’t just a problem for the coal industry !
Hey, but I hear you say what about that terrible pollutant Molybdenum ? Well apart from the valuable role played by Molybdenum in technologies such as mammography, Molybdenum is also utilized in a wide range of products such as fertilizer for agriculture, (cauliflower etc).
Molybdenum is also essential for human health. In humans, molybdenum acts as a catalyst for enzymes facilitating the breakdown of many amino acid crucial for human health. Molybdemun deficiency causes intellectual disability, seizures, opisthotonus, and lens dislocation,tachycardia, tachypnea, headache, nausea, vomiting, and coma.
Oh, and of course it’s used in the production of Wind and Solar !
Now the really Good News !
The relaxation of the excessively restrictive Obama era regulations will allow not only the elimination of 80% of coal ash from power generation, but turn this once waste product, into a valuable source of new energy and building materials ! This will help to clean up historical coal waste long forgotten.
The restrictive “one size fits all” ideological approach adopted by the Obama administration deterred the advance of technologies that would produce such tangible environmental benefits.
Advances in technology to make the Coal industry more competitive by reusing waste to produce valuable by-products is rapidly taking effect. Environmental regulations shouldn’t be so restrictive they become counter-productive to the original objective.
Hopefully, the restructuring of these regulations to allow real solutions and not stifle innovation.
Legislation and regulations to protect the environment are absolutely the duty of governments and regulators. Enforcement should be rigorous and vigilant. Penalties should be severe enough to ensure compliance.
However, regulation must also be driven by realistic objectives, not emotive, ill-informed hysteria or bureaucrats far away from local circumstances, making decisions based on political ideology not real objectives.
It’s time the EPA focused attention on the ticking time bomb regarding the safe disposal of billions of highly pollutant obsolescent solar panels and wind turbines.
Craig, in the last 6 years, a vast number of exciting new environmental technologies have been developed to help older technologies and industries become more environmentally positive.
Some of these new technologies are little short of miraculous, yet you either maintain a stony silence, ignoring such advances or continue to concentrate on political attacks on the current US administration.
At some point you must decide whether your priority is as an environmentalist promoting clean(er) technology, or a party activist and political opportunist. Attempting to combine both reduces your effectiveness as either, since the obvious bias involved reduces your credibility.