Course is sound so scary–COAL ASH. It has enviro groups competing for center stage and prominence.
Money and a sense of importance.
Is Coal Ash a toxic thing? Or is this about aesthetics and pumping up the nature of enviro regs.
I have to remind my friends and colleagues that the Clean Air Act was misnamed. A rational reading of all the pollution statutes should ban the word clean from the texts because in every case of a CLEAN ______ statute, what they meant was safe.
Clean is an aesthetic, religious, pantheist, utopian concept–safe is a toxicological, medical, sensible standard.
Safe got torched and forgotten by the fanatics in politics and enviro organizations NGO and Government. The problem of bad attitudes was amplified by deceptive and deceitful toxicological epidemiology–that could always find an “effect” in observational studies AND the cheating that went on in the late 40s that gave us one hit no threshold linear radiation toxicology and its resultant distortion of general toxicology–linear no threshold (one hit) toxicology that is enshrined today, at the same time that sensible toxicologists recognize threshold toxicology as the real world.
So the coal ash thing will have a life of its own and maybe even have a syndrome to call its own if enough neurotics get together and establish a study center group that claims a constellation of symptoms and an exposure to scary Coal Ash.
Biggest problem the green bullies have is making coal ash toxic–it is relatively inert and just sits there, so you’d have to eat it or roll in it or smoke it in a pipe or stand down wind in a gale. But in a one hit linear no threshold panicky green bully world hope springs eternal for a syndrome, the Duke Energy Syndrome coming your way–keep an eye on these enviro outfits–particularly the very ambitious and successful Southern Environmental Center, that has been all over the Duke deal.
http://whqr.org/post/environmental-coalition-seeks-ignite-local-activism-coal-ash
Because it is alkaline and hydrophilic, coal ash can absorb a tremendous quantity of CO2, turning it into concrete suitable for paving, bricks, and other useful items.
My grandmother used to tell me that a ‘weed’ is just a plant you haven’t found a use for yet.
I worked 35 yrs with electrocstatic precipitators that remove coal/fly ash from power station flue gases, and every day would end up with me covered head to foot in coal ash. I am now retired 68yrs old healthy fit and active