OLD CLEAN COAL

Don't you just love the adds that proclaim coal as clean. Okay. Sure. It can be processed to "quote" burn clean "unquote" but it can't be programmed to be taken out of the ground clean. Here are some recent statitstics surrounding the huge spill of mining waste near the Kingston Fossil Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority plant 40 miles west of Knoxville, which contained many decades worth of toxic coal mining waste. In a single year, a coal-fired electric plant deposited more than 2.2 million pounds of toxic materials in a holding pond that failed on December 22, 2008, flooding 300 acres in East Tennessee, according to a 2007 inventory filed with the Environmental Protection Agency. The inventory, disclosed by the Tennessee Valley Authority on December 29, 2008 at the request of The New York Times, showed that in just one year, the plant’s byproducts included 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium and 140,000 pounds of manganese. Those metals can cause cancer, liver damage and neurological complications, among other health problems. Clean Coal My Ass.