oday a coalition of environmental organizations and clean water groups released an eye popping new report highlighting the public health threats of toxic water pollution from coal-fired power plants. Environmental experts from Waterkeeper Alliance, Sierra Club, Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and Clean Water Action reviewed technical data from 386 coal-fired power plants across the country and found that the Clean Water Act has been almost universally ignored by power companies and permitting agencies.

For each plant, the groups reviewed permit and monitoring requirements for some of the most toxic poisons routinely discharged into rivers, lakes and bays on a daily basis including arsenic, boron, cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium. The report, Closing the Floodgates: How the Coal Industry Is Poisoning Our Water and How We Can Stop It found that:

In the absence of any effective pollution limit, coal plants have become by far the largest source of toxic water pollution in the country

Of the 274 coal plants that discharge coal ash and scrubber wastewater into waterways, nearly 70 percent (188) have no limits on the toxics most commonly found in these discharges (arsenic, boron, cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium) that are dumped directly […]