Let’s #kickcoalash out of our communities

By Jennifer Peters, National Water Campaigns Coordinator. Follow Jennifer on Twitter - @EarthAvenger Join us for a coal ash week of social media action, August 4th - August 8th. Next week marks six months since Duke Energy’s coal ash spill, which dumped more than 39,000 tons of toxic ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated wastewater into the Dan River, the source of drinking water for thousands of Virginians living downstream.  Activists from around the country will be highlighting this by using social media, letters to the editor, and blogs (even here!) to urge the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House to finalize safeguards to better protect public health and the environment from this harmful waste. Coal ash, the byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity, is full of hazardous chemicals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, many of which are known carcinogens. Electric utilities generate at least 140 million tons of coal ash every year, but there have never been federal regulations in place to prevent this waste from contaminating our water, air and land. Contamination has occurred not only from large spills like the Duke spill in North Carolina and the TVA spill in Tennessee, but from hundreds of poorly managed and leaking ash pits across the country, many of which are unstable, unlined and unmonitored. In December EPA is expected to issue the first-ever safeguards to protect communities from this waste.  Let the agency know you want strong safeguards to ensure your drinking water and community will not be poisoned by this hazardous waste. Join us in telling EPA and the White House that it is long past time to #kickcoalash out of our communities!  Learn more about coal ash here: http://cleanwateraction.org/programinitiative/clean-up-coal-ash We have put together a twitter guide and sample tweets to help get you started here and here.