Bluff collapse at power plant sends dirt, coal ash into Lake Michigan

Oak Creek, WI – A large section of bluff collapsed Monday next to the We Energies Oak Creek Power Plant, sending dirt, coal ash and mud cascading into the shoreline next to Lake Michigan and dumping a pickup truck, dredging equipment, soil and other debris into the lake.

There were no injuries, and the incident did not affect power output from the plant.

When the section of bluff collapsed and slid from a terraced area at the top of a hill down to the lake, Oak Creek Acting Fire Chief Tom Rosandich said, it left behind a debris field that stretched 120 yards long and 50 to 80 yards wide at the bottom.

Aerial images show a trailer and storage units holding construction equipment tumbled like Tonka toy trucks and were swept along with the falling bluff in a river of dirt that ended in the water.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/authorities-investigate-bluff-collapse-at-we-energies-plant-132929538.html

I know I am chiming in on this story a bit late, I’ve known about it far longer ( since Oct 31) but had such an emotional response to the story I thought it better to calm down a bit before talking about it. My first thoughts were will this affect Lola’s drinking water.  Certainly, I don’t want my hostess in Inworldz drinking mercury so wanted to contact her first to make sure she was safe.  Second response was anger, lots of anger at the lack of regulations that allow this sort of thing to happen.  Third, what about my salmon that swim through Lake Michigan on their way to the Michigan rivers where they are caught.

Although some components of coal ash can be recycled into useful products…if it is recycled but what is dangerous about this stuff is that it also contains one or more of the following elements or substances in quantities from trace amounts to several percent: arsenic, beryllium, boron, cadmium, chromium, chromium VI, cobalt, lead, manganese, mercury, molybdenum, selenium, strontium, thallium, and vanadium, along with dioxins and PAH compounds.  That’s the stuff you don’t want in drinking water.  At this particular plant that had the accident, already some local wells were poisoned enough that they had to provide the people living there with bottled water, now we have this crap in Lake Michigan as well.

It really bothers me that 22% of the world’s freshwater is contained in the Great Lakes yet we treat this important resource so casually like it’s no big deal.  We got the sweetheart trash deals that former Republican Governor Engler made using Michigan, that is surrounded by fresh water, as Canada’s trash dump.  Coal Ash is also being buried there too that will just leach into the water table in time.  Mercury levels in Great Lakes fish and animals are increasing again instead of decreasing.  Companies like Nestle are bottling up Great Lakes water under such names as “Ice Mountain” and shipping it nationwide and overseas as well, with high power pumps that they hide in the woods.  It’s all so insane.

Yes, all this stuff has to go somewhere but why be so stupid as to locate it where it can do the maximum amount of damage to our water supply?  Wouldn’t it be smarter to bury it in some inhabitable desert where there is far less water to contaminate?  It would be far easier to keep the coal ash from the water table in desert conditions yet they want to put it in Michigan instead.  Just makes me sick and angry just thinking about it.