Gerald E. Connolly, a Democrat, represents Virginia’s 11th Congressional District in the House.
With a stroke of a pen, acting Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler helped cement the toxic legacy of Scott Pruitt’s reign over the EPA by rolling back federal coal ash standards. For many Northern Virginia residents, Pruitt’s ethical scandals were proximate sources of outrage. But his coal ash rule will hit even closer to home: their backyards.
We are not yet 10 years removed from the catastrophic coal ash spill near Kingston, Tenn., and only four years on from the Duke Energy spill that dumped 39,000 tons of toxic coal ash into the Dan River along the Virginia-North Carolina border. Communities are still cleaning up from these disasters. Yet the Trump EPA thinks it is time to let polluters decide how they will handle coal ash. The swamp somehow just got dirtier.
There are more than 300 coal ash impoundments across the United States, including Possum Point in my Northern Virginia district, which are at high or significant hazard risk for failure. An event such as the Kingston spill, which released more than 5 million cubic yards of coal ash, covering more than 300 acres in toxic sludge and resulting in more than $1.2 billion in cleanup costs, would have devastating consequences for our region.
