United states dramatically shaped our energy future. Today, there is no greater source of power than coal combustion. Its responsnsible r nearly 4 40 of our electricity. But burning coal generates waste. Its called coal ash, and every year in the u. S. , 130 million tons of it is created. Its thehe largest industrial waste stream in america. You could fill the boxcars of a Freight Train that would stretch from new york city to melbourne, australia, with the coal ash thats generated every year in this country. The ash contains toxic metals. Lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, others. And it even s radioactive substances. Its these pollutants, many of them known to cause cancer, that have people worried. And the big question is, where are all ththese toxins ending u . Theres fly ash and coal dust. Well go on the front porch and do the same thing. You can see as you look up there the fresh ash. Its like an orangish color. When its windy, it can get into their homes, it can get into their cars, and god forbid theyre walking across the street or whatever, it actually gets into their lungs. In n the unitited statetes, e are ovever 500 coalfired power plants. And untntil recently, the dangers of coal ash have largely beenen hidden from publc view. This is one of the largest coalfired Power Facilities in the country. Called plant scherer, its located in juliette, georgia, and is majority owned by Georgia Power. Each year it produces 3 1 2 million kilowatts of electricity. Generating that power requires a lot of coalal. Over 1,200 tons of coal are burned every hour at plant scherer, and in 2010, that resulted in 2,200 tons of coal ash. And its all dumped into a 750acre e unlined pond, meaning nothing prevents toxins from entering the groundwater. They built this plant a an aa where ththeres no public water access. Eveveryone within a 5me radius and maybe e even further, drinking g on private welell wa. That includes donna and phil welch. When theyey built their home n 2001, they thoughght they were moving into an ideal countryside h home. And we were so excited about moving to the country. Um, fresh air, you know, kind of John Denverish generation that we were from. And we were excited about bringing our children too the country. You know, building the home of our d dreams. Insteadad, like others in juliette, they got sick. Several years after we moved in, i started developing some numbness in my feet. First in one foot, and then it just ket getting worse. And it just realllly was concningng. I uldd lose my balance. Then, i had d a stomachahache fr 3 weeks, really,y, really bad. D. I had been to the doctor, hehe drew blood, and he called e at wowork and said, your liver s almost in failure. He said, ive never seen liver enzymes as high asas yours are. E. Donna isnt the only one with Severe Health issues. Mark goolsby, who once worked at the plant, doesnt believe its safafe to live here. Theres been 12 people on this road alone die with different kinds of cancer. My mothers probably a mile or less from the plant. My mother stays chronicalally il with h sinus infections. Theres other familieses on this particular road, they have neurological problems, and all of this is documented through the local doctors. There was one article in our macon paper about a lady that lives maybe 2 miles from here. Her husband had passed away, and he had had a rare form of cancer. Before he dieied, she hd both their hair tested, andnd it came up very high in some heavy mmetal elements. A and so she hd her water tested. We thought surely thats not our problem, but we might as well have it tested. Donna sent her water here, to the university of f georgias Water Testing facility. Using sophisticated instruments, technicians like jake mower are able to determine what elements are present in a watetr sasample. Donna welch and i have spoken many times. She had aa very elevated amount of uranium in her well water. She also had radon in her water and radon in her home air. So her family was exposed to quite a bit of environmental toxicity uranium will break down to radon, radium. They are classified as carcinogens. I think it would bebe very interesesting to find out exacty what the source of the uranium contamination is, largrgely because her case was a little severe. I think its a little unusual. Now donna has no safe well water coming to her home and must rely on bottled water for everyday needs. You can imagine how many i go thrhrough and j just the, um, you u know, not being able tot have the simple convenience of running watater in your homome thatsthats safe. So its a its a chore. The story isnt much different in one tricounty area of pennsylvania. Instead d of one coalfired powr plant, there are 6. Unlike plant scherer, which burns pure coal, these plants are burning coal waste left over by previous mining. Coal waste, also called culm, can now be burned to generate power. But there are some downsides. Not only is coal waste less efficient than regular coal, it also has higher concentrations of heavy metals. Matter doesnt disappear. Metals dont just disappear. Ththey cant. And so when youn waste coal, those metals, like lead and arsenic and cadmium, are left more concentrated than ever in the waste coal ash. 9 to 10 million tons of coal ash are dumped every year in pennsylvania. And a lot of it is happening right here in schhuylkill county and surrounding counties. John kolbush, a local resident and survivor of leukemia, has coal ash being dumped just minutes from his house. Here at the Northeastern Power Company in mcadoo, coal ash is trucked from the plant straight through the heart of town to an old mine site for dumping, bringing toxic coal ash ever closer to people. Whenwhen the trucks are leaving and when theyre fully loaded, the ashes is blowing out of the vehicles. And when they come through town here, empty, they dont have the tarps on, the ash just blows. If you see some of the houses, the sidings on the houses with the thick accumulation of soot and ash. A year and half ago, we came through there, and it was a really windy day, it was like a smog going through it. None of the ash was covered and its justit was actuaually like driving through a fog. And its just aits a crime. Theres the one that we just followed down the roroad. Hes dumping and you can see the ash there. This pit was approximately 300 feet deep. Its all filled with ashes. They run probably two dozen trucks continuous all day long, 6 days a week. Tons of coal ash are dumped legally in unlined pits every year, even though the u. S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges coal ash can cause Serious Health effects. Coal ash is also being used in creating products like roofing material, bricks, and concrete. The epa calls this beneficial use, and members of the coal industry claim reusing coal ash provides an environmental benefit. There are a wide variety of things we can use coal ash for, rarather than throwow it away. The most prominent uses are, uh, using coal fly ash in concrete. Every ton of fly ash we put into coconcrete is a ton o of cementt doesnt need to be made, and not making that ton of cement has saved over 11 million tons of co2 emissions last year alone. Used p properly, coal ash is a safe material for beneficial usese. The levels of metals in coal ash are comparable to the levels of metals in n the dirt and rocks in yourur backyard. We believe the best solution to coal ash disposal problems is to quit throwing it away. In parts of ththe country, these historic coal mines have a tremendous problem with acid mine drainage. Youveve seen n the oranangecod creeks and those kind of things. Coal ash can actually be u used, uh, to modify the ph in those settings and relieve that acid mine drainage. So thats an examplple where you actuallyly t to put the cocoal ash in contact with the water because e its it improves ththe Water Quality by doing that. But local people in pennsylvania disagree. This is actually the opening from the gilberton mineshaft. They have put 1 16 million tons of fly ash into the beaty mining and the owen gowen site to control acid mine drainage. And this is whats coming out from underneath them. And you can see on the rocks up there in the corner, you can see acid mine drainage. You can see the iron pyrite. Right theres the ash, all the way back there. Wow. Theres no liner. Theres no nothing. Its just poured on the ground. Underneath most of these sites, you have mine pools. Theres more chemicals in there prprobably thahan youd have i e avererage chemicalal factory. Ad its all leachingng into ththe ground to whatever mine p pool is undederneath, tgod knowsws whose water supply where. Were talking about a quarter of a Million People live here. Now, people arent drinking all that t mine pooool water. Theye drinking reservoir water that the mine pool helps feed. The water that flows into those reservoirs comes from groundwater and from mine pools and from springs that come out of the sides of mountains. And the danger is if you contaminate too many of those sources, then you have a health threaeat. Jusust as in juliliette, geo, people hehere are also gettining sick. If you type in hazleton, it does c come up cancer capital of pennsylylvania. This is ground zero for the polycythemia vera cancer investigation. Called pv for short, polycythemia vera is a rare form of blood cancer in most of the u. S. But here, theres a confirmed cluster of pv cases. In 2004, we learned that there were 67 diagnosed cases of polycythemia vera, which ultimately led to theto the cconfirmation n of a cancer cluster. Since then, 13130 cases of polycythemia vera have been reported to the pa cancer registry. Pepeople with h pv, like d da trtrently anand merle wertrtman, suffer from an overproduction of red blood cells. So the blood gets very thick, and it can cause, you know, blockages to smaller blood vessels that feed d vital organs of our body. Tissue dea c can occur anywhere in n the body. It can occur in theieir brain, it can occur in their toe, it can occur in their liver. R. Weve seen patients where theyve developed infarctions to their feet, where theyve had to o have toes amputated. They have infarctions to theieir liver. They can have an infarction to their heart, much like a heart attack. The way it works on you, youre so exhausted and tired, you have chronic pain everywhere. I i have chronic fatigue. Headacheses, terrible. It affects your vision. Ill just wake up and hahave pas in my legs and my hands and my feet. Its vascular, so it goes through every part, every vein on your body, youre having a lot of pain, every direction. Yoyou dont knknow wherere to pt yourself. For merle, who has been a sports fanatic all his life, pv has really changed his once active lifestyle. These aresome of these are pete rose. Hes my favorite. Steve carlton. Hes a. Sometimes i get moodody and miserable, but i dont think i was always that way. They give me a phlebotomy. Uh, they stick a 12gauge needle in your arm and they draw all the blood out of you. Usually 26 ounces they take out. When i first got this, it was, uh, i was getting it twice a month, every two weeks. In the 22square mile polycythemia Vera Research cluster area, uh, theres a number of environmental assaults. At least 6 known superrfund sites, 6 waste coal generators, and over 23 unlined waste coal ash pits, all surrounding our communitys public Water Supplies and private well users. From a scientific perspective, its known that polycythemia vera is an acquired d cancer, meaning ththat its lilikely ofe environment. Youre not born with it. So now were looking at this very complex mystery of the environment and its potential link in causing p. Vera. The search for answers began here, at the now silent home of betty and lester kester. Whatat is happening here is t beautiful. Its not a pretty story. As beautiful as my parents life was, and as many wonderful things they had in it, the e p. Vera, it t really affed their life in a dramatic way. Both passed away in 2008. The p. Vera took their lives within about 5 years from the time that t they were diagnosed with it. Ground zero for polycythemia vera in ththe free world, or in the world in n general, was bety and lester kester. When betty kester died, she had decided to donate her body to science for the invnvestigation. Her body tissues eventually found their way here to dr. Ronald hoffmans lab in mt. Sinai hospital in new york city. He has spent nearly 40 years s studying pv. There were too many patients with polycythehemia vera in tha in thatat area than one could account for. Whether the environment or toxins in the enenvironmenent lead t to an ind risk of polycythemia vera is unknown. Thatats really an area of Research Anand also speculation. The problem is that there are multiple toxic compounds that are in the ground and also in the air in this area, and to prove a onetoone relationship is going to be very, very tougugh. In this area, there were a lot of supeperfund sites and coal mines. So, you know, they werent here, they werent there. They were here. And that was the concern. And thats the concern in my mind toto this day. Its a question mark. I dont have the answer to this. Im not a statistician, but intuitively it would seem to me more than chance thatthat this would occur. While science continues to gather evidence, some people believe that politics and profit are outweighing the need to protect public health. Whether its a Democratic Administration or a republican administraration, coal talks. Government agencies, in my opinion, have m more been apt to represent the best interests of the polluters. They seem to have rights more so than what people do. Georgia power, i think, is very effective in influencing, if not contntrolling, w what gs voted d on. They get what t they want. Im trying to figure out if they ever dont get what they want. Theres no monitoring systems, theres no liner systems. Theres a whole litany of things that just are absent, uh, from how we conduct our environmental business. In pennsylvania, two agencies, the state department of Environmental Protection and the federal agency for toxic substances and disease registry are obligated to protect public health. But they have both drawn criticism for not adequately addressing the contamination problem. The monitoring is overseen by the department o of Environmental Protection. We have one site where a public water supply has been contntaminated with arsenic. The epepas toxic release inventory indicates that high levels of arsenic was found in much of the ash that was dumped at this site. All right . So, you know, simply from the standpoint of the waste stream, the quality of the waste stream and what has happened to the public water supply, indicates an adequate study should have been done to determine if ththee is a connection between the disposal site and the well. This never did occccur. The public have been simply brushed off and told, dont worry, trust us. You are adequately protected. But once again, this is being done without any adequate data to give to the public. And consequently the public is saying, should we trust the people that are supposed to protect us . For the last 20 years, these federal and state agencies, the same ones that have been investigatating this problem, he been promoting this process of dumping the coal ash without any safeguards. For them to now, uh, admit that they think that the coal ash is causing these cancers would be to admit that they caused this whole e problem in the first place. While families wait for answers, toxic ash continues to pile up. Back in georgia, people arent just frustrated about poor regulation, theyre claiming that Georgia Power is trying to hide the problem. Georgrgia powerer will tetell ye 7750acre unlined pond poses no threat to local r residents. But behind this goodneighbor disgsguise, some c company actis suggest that they know there is a problelem. In the lastst deca, Georgia Power r bought several homes from residents witith particularly poor health. My aunt, she was bought out last july. She had been out here since 1976. And her concrete driveway starting turning black. Her brick started to turning. She would go out in the yard and have severe nosebleeds. Then she developed breast cancer. R. When my aunts house s purchased, they hired a contractor to come in. They filled the well, they filled the septic tank, tore her house down, tore up the concrete driveway, planted pine trees, like theres nothin ever been there. Put up a fence and d posd signs. But we feel kind of like david going up against goliath, you know. Its, uh, to me, to buy out one person on this road that complained about it, go 5 miles down the road, buy out another family, but yet leave people close to the plant thats in harms way, i say, uh, to have to breathe in this coal dust and this fly ash, theyre trying to hide something. And i think Georgia Power has known all along that thereres been a problem. Mark isnt the only one who shares that opinion. Local lawyer brian adams, who grew up near the plant, now represents over 100 juliette residents who are suing the plant for environmental contamination. There have been deaths that we attribute that are related to the toxins that are coming from thehe plant. Linking everything together is certainly one of the scientific issues that were working on, but we wewe know that there we b bad thinings, bad contaminants that are coming from the plant that are getting to the people in the community that are causing health problems. We do have liver cancer, kidneyey cancer, stomach cancer, all that we are aafraid is attributed to the cocontaminatioions. I think k as people realize that maybe geororgia power has s known thtt some of this stuff is not good and not good for the area, a and they never said anything, instead encouraraged people to e in that t area, thats where the anger really stararts to get in, because, again, they feel like theyve been lied to. The thing is, Georgia Power does do meme goo thihings for ththe community. Thehey help people in the community, they give back, they give to good causes. A lot of f people in that ccommunity, they do wowork ther. But its in part to cover up these callous and cruel things that t they know theyve done. Theyve knonow this stuff is goa cause problems, and it appears that they dont really care. A lot of our claims are based on some common law claims that say, look, you cant do something and harm your neighbor. And thatats what theyre doing. Theyre harming their neieighbor. And that is a violation of the law. As litigation in georgia slowly plays out, coal ash dumps across the u. S. Continue to b be regululated at the state level, resulting in a patchwork of standards. Many states, like georgia and pennsnsylvania, exet coal ash from m Hazardous Waste regulation. At the federal level, debate over coal ash regulation has dragggged on for decades. And despite recent coal ash spills in north carolina, coal ash has yet to receive federal regulation. Garbage disposal and trash is probably more regulated than coal ash is. Without any question, we need a National Regulation to establish a bar that every state has to meeeet. And this is how were going to protect the public. The government has been sued to demand that they d do somethg ababout thisis. The problem is t the Power Companies s have known since the seventities and proby longer than that that this coal ash is such a mamassive, huge amount of waste that they dont know what to do with. They have fought for yeyears and years and years to make sure that the regulations dont make i it difficult for them to get rid of this stuff. The message for the commumunities are you have to defend yourself anand know that your government that you are financining is not adequatately defending your heaealth, safety, and welflfare, nor your rights o clean air, clean land, and clean water. The people who live around coal ash dump sites believe they are being shrugged off as collateral damage, by both corporarate intererests and slolowmoving government agenci. More than anyone, they know whats at stake. Ive lived 55 years. And i know that its a touough economy and people have to make tough decisions. Um, i do think that powower and moneynd g gre is a a bigis a a big part o o. I do believe that we need energy. I do believe that we im not against c coal. The thig that i would like to see is, , not shutting the company down or anything like that. I just do not want these contaminants seeping into the underground waterer. If we could just let people have clean w water and clean air to breathe. And stst get back k to the busisiness of living and nonot worried d about dydying. Burning coal to generate power isnt going away anytime soon. But there is a changing climate in the energy sector. The way we produce power in tthis country is c changing,g, t will continue to chanange. At te end of the day, i think were all realizing that you cannot make a coal plant as safe as you can make other energy producuction. And while we rely heavily on coal now, that does not excuse the coal inindustry from its obligation to operate safely. That, too, is a cost of doing business. 09 25 17 09 25 17 [captioning made possible by democracy now ] amy from pacifica, this is democracacy now pres. Trump wouldnt you love to see one of these nfl owners when somebody disrespects our flag to say, get that son of a bitch off the field right now . He is fired. Hes fired amy President Donald Trump lashes out at players whove joined a protest movement started by former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick against racism and police violence, kneeling during the National Anthem ahead of games