Dec 29

Written by: schulz
12/29/2008 2:13 PM

The breach of the power plant dike burst in Tennessee shows once again that there is not such a thing as a clean coal plant.  I recently watched the documentary movie, "Burning The Future: Coal in America" which shows the damage done to a community in West Virginia by coal mining and burning.  The damage to the environment is three fold.  First, the tops of mountains are removed to extract the coal, along with the forests.  Then, the coal is burned which necessitates the building of these dikes to hold the fly ash sludge, which often seeps into the community's ground water.  Ultimately, the burning the coal releases CO2 emissions which contribute to global warming.  Spills like the one in Tennessee have occurred in Pennsylvania and Georgia recently.  You can be assured this will not be the last one.  Fortunately, no one was killed directly by this one.    

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