Database to Monitor Pollution Near Coal Ash Sites

摘要

The Environmental Integrity Project May 28 launched an online database for monitoring groundwa-ter quality readings near coal ash facilities around the country. The website, Ashtracker, contains 39,080 groundwater readings at 1,010 monitoring wells. They are near 30 coal ash waste sites in 16 states from Florida to North Dakota. "Many of these coal-ash landfills are ticking time bombs and need to be cleaned up," Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said in a statement. The site comes as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to issue regulations on the management of coal ash Dec. 19. The agency is debating whether to regulate coal ash under the hazardous waste regulations of Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act or under the nonhazardous waste provisions of Subtitle D.