Oregon
denying a permit for a coal dock on the Columbia River Monday
may seem far away, but the effects of coal ash are right here
in Lowndes County.
Effects that an Alabama county is calling a toxic chemical civil rights violation in the Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown.
AP reported 14 August 2014,
EPA investigating claims west Alabama landfill violates civil rights of black property owners,
It’s not the first time that the Arrowhead has been in the news. In
2009, an estimated 3.9 million tons of coal ash was dumped at the
landfill. It was brought in after a Tennessee Valley Authority dam
breached in east Tennessee, spilling toxic ash into a river and
damaging about 300 acres. To date, it’s the largest coal ash spill
in U.S. history.Much of that ash ended up being dumped at the landfill in Perry
County, which in return received an estimated $4.1 million.
Some of that same coal ash from the TVA spill in Tennessee
was shipped to the Pecan Row Landfill in Lowndes County, Georgia,
which spread some of it on its roads,
which are
in an aquifer recharge zone for the Floridan Aquifer
and a quarter mile uphill from the Withlacoochee River.
Joan Walker wrote for Footprints 22 December 2013,
Five years since Kingston: Perry County, Alabama’s Toxic Tragedy,
Coal ash-laden runoff from the Arrowhead landfill carries up to 80 times EPA’s legal limit for arsenic in drinking water
Why shouldn’t we expect the same kind of runooff from the Pecan Row Landfill?
Pecan Row was privatized some years back and is supposedly
overseen by the Deep South Solid Waste Authority, to which
the Lowndes County Commission appoints members yet
doesn’t know who’s on it,
and
can’t or won’t account for tipping fees received.
Now there’s another question: did ADS get millions of dollars for accepting
that toxic coal ash into Lowndes County?
The same ADS to which the same County Commission
gave an exclusive franchise for trash collection
and along with which the county is suing a local business.
Does anything smell bad to you about all this?
-jsq