Kingston Coal Ash Sludge Spill Over a Billion Gallons: Time to Take a Hard Look at the Coal Industry

Richard Graves at the wonderful blog It's Getting Hot In Here has an excellent update on the coal ash spill in Tennessee, which, as his title states, is now known to be A BILLION GALLONS.

Numbers aside, it is impossible to really comprehend the scale of the disaster in words - this is a very dramatic example of how our consumption and reliance on coal is quite literally reshaping our world. Whether by flooding 400 acres of beautiful Tennessee valleys and rivers with six feet of coal ash, or blowing the tops off of literally hundreds of mountains in Appalachia, or changing the global climate itself through massive releases of carbon dioxide - the coal industry has perhaps the greatest impact of any industry in the world - yet we barely know it. Coal plants intake almost 20% of the United States’ freshwater, uses almost half of our freight railroad capacity, and leaves behind scarred landscapes, poor and exploited communities, [and] kills vulnerable people.

How many such ponds does Virginia Dominion Power (aka Dominion, aka Dominion Resources) have in Virginia? Where are they located, and how much toxic coal sludge do they contain? I wrote to Dominion last week to ask these questions. Still no reply. Could there be ash ponds in Virginia with a billion gallons of sludge? Who knows?