Clean Coal

A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times larger than initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The spill has reignited a debate over whether coal ash should be federally regulated as a hazardous material.

Environmentalists have long argued that coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater and poison aquatic environments, should be stored in lined landfills. The ash ponds at Kingston were separated from the river only by earthen dikes. Coal plants around the country, most located near rivers that supply the water they need to operate, store coal ash in unlined embankments and ponds, and in some areas coal ash is recycled as fill material.

The T.V.A. is still investigating the cause of the breach, but officials have suggested that unusually heavy rain and freezing temperatures may have been factors.

Americans will have a variety of choices ahead as we debate our energy future. One of the important things to remember as we consider is the important difference between technological feasibility and sociological feasibility.

Our societal decision making and governing systems may not be capable of safely handling various technological possibilities. It may be that we will be offered technologies for which an engineering solution exists that we do not have the societal maturity to handle.

This disaster is just the latest in the long checkered past of the coal industry. Presumably, it was technologically possible to store all that coal ash in a more environmentally safe way, and engineering solutions that would have made for a fail-safe containment.

So then, why is it strewn across the landscape, with who knows what long-term effect on the citizens and the environment?

My guess is that it isn't actually capturing CO2 emissions that is the biggest hurdle between here and "clean coal technology". Convince me that we can govern the coal companies first.