Environmental group says Indiana's coal ash ponds are a danger to drinking water

While North Carolina officials continue to debate about who will foot the bill to move North Carolina coal ash ponds after a recent spill into the Dan River, a report from Indiana says the state has more coal ash ponds than any other state, and despite a troubling number of spills, "State environmental regulators have done little to address the ongoing problems of how to dispose of coal waste," Ryan Sabalow reports for The Indianapolis Star.

The report by the Hoosier Environmental Council states that some coal-fired plants have ash ponds that are located near drinking water but aren't lined to prevent groundwater contamination, Sabalow writes. The report "says Indiana electric utilities generated 6.6 million tons of coal ash in 2012. Much of that ash—which is known to contain toxins such as arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury and chromium—ends up a [sic] Indiana's 84 coal ash ponds, the most of any state in the nation."

Tim Maloney, the group's senior policy director and lead author of the report, told Sabalow, "It's a huge, unregulated source of surface-water pollution, as well as the ash in the ponds percolating down through the unlined ground beneath them and contaminating groundwater." He said the state is one of the nation's worst "with 13 documented cases of ash spills and other documented cases of groundwater contamination." (Read more)