An Alabama Scenario: Hurricane Florence Raises Questions About Coal Ash and Mobile Bay
Is Alabama ready for an environmental disaster worse than the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and more difficult to clean up? If Hurricane Florence had hit Alabama instead of the Carolinas, that might well have occurred, according to leaders of Mobile Baykeeper, an organization intent on protecting the ecology of the bay. The damage they see as a risk would come from flooding or collapse of an almost 600-acre pond that stores toxic residue of coal burned for power generation at Alabama Power Company’s 60-year-old Plant Barry, 25 miles from the mouth of Mobile Bay. Casi Callaway, the baykeeper’s executive director, and Cade Kistler, its program director, base their views on a report that Mobile Baykeeper issued earlier this year, “Mobile Baykeeper Pollution Report: Coal Ash at Alabama Power’s Plant Barry." The Waterkeeper Alliance and Southern Environmental Law Center were also involved in preparing the report. Callaway and Kistler said a slow-moving, rain-heavy hurricane such as the recent Hurricane Florence could produce flooding that breaches or overflows the earthen dam protecting what they call the state’s most vulnerable coal ash storage basin. Plant Barry’s 21 tons of coal ash containing toxic levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium and other pollutants is 20 times greater in volume than the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Read more.
