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June 30, 2021 Waste product often dumped in communities of the least powerful MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today questioned expert witnesses at a Natural Resources Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on “Toxic Coal Ash: Adverse Health Effects from the Puerto Rico Plant and Options for Plant Closure.” In April, Congressman Cohen introduced the Ensuring the Safe Disposal of Coal Ash Act, which would strengthen protections against coal ash contamination by rectifying deficiencies in the 2015 Coal Ash Rule weakened by the Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In his questioning of witnesses Congressman Cohen said in part: “Coal ash is a toxic by-product of coal plants filled with dangerous heavy metals and can become lodged in people’s lungs and cause asthma, lung disease or cancer…What’s going on (with coal ash) in Puerto Rico is awful…It’s also going on in Memphis, Tennessee, and up ....
Correction: This story has been updated to clarify the separate timelines for the Tennessee Valley Authority to dispose of coal ash at the Allen Fossil Plant and remediation of the plant itself. U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen took aim at the lingering coal ash in his district this week, targeting the pollution that is the byproduct of coal-fired power plants in Memphis and across the country. Cohen introduced the Ensuring the Safe Disposal of Coal Ash Act this week, a move that could help strengthen provisions of the Clean Future Act, a bill introduced this year that is aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions and includes measures intended to speed up coal ash clean-up and set further standards for it. ....
Representative Steve Cohen introduced the Ensuring Safe Disposal of Coal Ash Act, building upon Energy and Commerce leaders’ CLEAN Future Act coal ash language to tackle the second largest source of industrial waste in the United States and its disproportionate impact on underserved communities. The bill, which would amend the Solid Waste Disposal Act, would direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to strengthen requirements necessary to protect human health and the environment from this toxic ash. It reverses the rollbacks made to coal ash protections by the Trump EPA in several ways, such as requiring power plants to ensure they can foot the bill for cleanup costs in the event of disasters or hazardous spills, prohibiting the continued operation of unlined impoundments, and requiring full regulatory oversight of any EPA-approved state coal ash programs. ....