Every year, South Carolina’s power plants burn enough coal to fill 10 large football stadiums, leaving behind a stadium-size pile of toxic ash.

Every year, our power companies dump roughly 2.3 billion pounds of this tainted ash in landfills and holding ponds, many precariously close to rivers and neighborhoods.

And every year, some of these landfills and ponds leak. Scattered across South Carolina, these vast pits and ponds of coal ash are polluting groundwater and waterways with arsenic, selenium and other chemicals that can cause health problems in wildlife and people, a Post and Courier Watchdog investigation found.

Water under some landfills has concentrations of arsenic many times the federal limit, documents obtained under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act show.

Consider:

– Near Moncks Corner, in the quiet Whitesville community, arsenic-laced water from a coal ash landfill is leaking into a nearby pond.

– Farther north, near Congaree National Park, arsenic 200 to 400 times the federal drinking water limit has been found in groundwater at SCE&G’s plant on the banks of the Wateree River.

– On the Savannah River, SCE&G’s Urquhart plant has groundwater tainted with arsenic eight times above the federal standard.

– Closer to Charleston, near Canadys, a breach in an earthen wall at two ash ponds allowed arsenic and nickel to pollute groundwater next to the Edisto River.

– Arsenic levels at Santee Cooper’s Grainger coal plant in Conway measured more than 900 parts per billion, 90 times higher than the federal drinking water limit. Significant contamination also has been found in coal ash ponds at the Savannah River Site.

Because of lax government oversight and bureaucratic loopholes, coal ash landfill operators here have polluted groundwater at their plants for years without a single fine.

Full Story: http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/oct/26/coals_
time_bomb59266/