Ken Ward Jr. reports on the wonders of coal:

Nearly two-thirds of the coal-ash dams across West Virginia might need repairs, and a quarter of them are ranked as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

DEP inspectors found stability problems, seepage and erosion at some of the dams as part of a roughly 10-month “comprehensive review” launched after the failure of a coal-ash impoundment in East Tennessee brought new attention to such facilities.

Agency officials also found problems that prompted at least five enforcement actions at landfills where dry waste products from coal-fired power plants were dumped, according to the 44-page DEP report.

Here is the report:

18349_Status of WV Fly Ash Dams-Landfills –

Clean Coal is awesome:

It has been six years since a contractor from Delray Beach brought the black dusty residue to the province of Samaná, and three years since the ash was cleaned up. Several civil lawsuits and criminal cases later, just when everyone thought it was over, the other shoe has dropped.

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

…

The ash, a concentrated form of naturally occurring contaminants, is what is left over from burning coal for power. It usually contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel. But as towns in Tennessee and Maryland clean up massive spills of the substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to rule on whether it should be classified as hazardous — which would be a tremendous blow to influential power companies that have long lobbied against such a classification.

Learn more about clean coal.

Huffington Post Green:

Leslie Stahl on Sunday’s 60 Minutes did an in-depth look at the problems with the by-products of coal production, commonly known as coal ash. Coal ash contains many toxic medals, including arsenic, which unchecked, can leak into ground water and be extremely hazardous to breathe. Stahl starts with a look at devastating coal ash spill that engulfed homes and destroyed whole communities in Tennessee in 2008 when a billion gallons of the toxic sludge in the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the US. This disaster brought the issue of coal ash to the national spotlight, and Stahl moves on to how to how coal ash is not labeled a hazardous waste by the EPA, and is currently being used as filler in everything from golf courses to carpeting in schools to kitchen counters.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Warming Law:

We hold that the district court erred in dismissing the complaints on political question grounds; that all of Plaintiffs have standing; that the federal common law of nuisance governs their claims; that Plaintiffs have stated claims under the federal common law of nuisance; that their claims are not displaced; and that TVA’s alternate grounds for dismissal are without merit. We therefore vacate the judgment of the district court and remand for further proceedings.

Here is CAC’s full statement, via email.

Second Circuit Issues Major Ruling Allowing Global Warming Lawsuit to Go Forward, Keeps Courthouse Doors Open to Environmental Plaintiffs

Mystery of the “Missing Sotomayor Opinion” Solved

On Monday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled broadly in favor of eight states, the City of New York, and several environmental organizations, allowing them to proceed with a lawsuit against six major power companies charging that their greenhouse gas emissions constitute a public nuisance.  The ruling overturned a district court decision dismissing the case on the ground that the lawsuit amounted to a non-justiciable political question.

Doug Kendall, President of Constitutional Accountability Center, issued this statement on the Second Circuit’s ruling:

“Yesterday’s opinion is profoundly significant, not only for its recognition of the climate crisis, but also for its affirmation of the historical role that courts have played in addressing environmental problems through their common law authority.  Written by two Republican-appointees, the opinion is a welcome challenge to efforts led by other conservatives, on the Supreme Court and off, to define good judging by a willingness to narrow the role of the federal courts and shut the courthouse doors to those seeking justice, including in environmental cases.

The Court’s ruling also solves what Sonia Sotomayor’s critics called the “mystery of the missing Sotomayor opinion.”  Then-Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor was part of a three judge panel that originally heard the case in June 2006, but not part of the ruling issued yesterday for the obvious reason that she is now sitting on the Supreme Court.  According to Kendall: “we now know what was taking the panel so long: it was producing a comprehensive 139-page ruling on a profoundly important set of topics.  This opinion was clearly worth the wait.”

New York Times:

UNIONTOWN, Ala. — Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

To county leaders, the train’s loads, which will total three million cubic yards of coal ash from a massive spill at a power plant in east Tennessee last December, are a tremendous financial windfall. A per-ton “host fee” that the landfill operators pay the county will add more than $3 million to the county’s budget of about $4.5 million.

Here is TVA’s Ash Disposal Plan:

Approved Offsite Ash Disposal Options Plan –