If your community is experiencing threats to your water from coal ash pollution, you are not alone and you can find assistance to address these problems.
Where to find help & report pollution
Waterkeepers
Local Waterkeepers are great resources for reporting pollution, investigating pollution issues, monitoring waterways, and working with local communities to figure out a way to address and fix water pollution problems. Waterkeepers are great resources on public participation opportunities and access to information about pollution sources and permits. To find Waterkeepers in the Chesapeake and coastal bays region, visit Waterkeepers Chesapeake’s website. To find Waterkeepers around the nation (and the world), visit Waterkeeper Alliance’s website. If you don’t have a Waterkeeper in your area, search out local Sierra Club chapters and other watershed groups for assistance, and visit River Network’s Who Protects Water? map.
Legal Clinics & Technical Assistance
- Chesapeake Legal Alliance
- Environmental Integrity Project
- Southern Environmental Law Center
- Earthjustice
- Environmental Protection Network
If you don’t have a nonprofit legal resource in your area, seek out environmental and other types of law clinics at universities.
Researching pollution permits
Use EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website to search for facilities in your community to assess their compliance with environmental regulations. State water quality agencies may also provide online access to existing pollution permits, such as Maryland Department of the Environment’s Wastewater Permits Interactive Search Portal.
Equity, justice & climate resources
- River Network’s Clean Water Act Owner’s Manual
- EPA’s EJ Screen & Mapping Tool
- Maryland’s EJ Screen & Mapping Tool
- NOAA Mid-Atlantic’s Projected Intensity-Duration-Frequency (IDF) Curve Data Tool for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and Virginia (for rainfall)
- River Network’s Water & Equity Mapping Tools
- River Network’s Tools for Equitable Climate Resilience
- American Rivers’ Water Justice Toolkit, 2020
- EPA’s Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice, 2020, Chapter 2: Water Programs
Reporting pollution
All Waterkeepers have pollution reporting hotlines (phone numbers, online forms, etc). You can report pollution from your phone with a number of apps. Download the Water Reporter and/or the Swim Guide and send in reports to your local Waterkeepers while you are out on your favorite waterway. The MyCoast app is used to document coastal and beach issues.
Public agencies on the local and state levels have ways for people to report pollution. Search for resources like this one in Fairfax County, VA, and Maryland’s report a pollution emergency.
Steps to take:
What to look for:
- Visible changes to the water, especially in heavy rains, because there may be heavy metals leaking into neighboring water bodies.
- Drinking water contamination – ask your local health department about testing drinking water wells and other drinking water sources.
- Symptoms associated with exposure to chemicals found in coal ash include nausea, vomiting, and damage to the nervous system or other organs, especially in children.
Document what you see:
Document what you see with photos and videos to share with Waterkeepers and public agencies. Community monitoring can be an incredibly helpful tool. For toxic metal pollutants, it can be expensive and you need to be properly trained. For the local or state government, or a court of law, to take the results seriously, it is important to have a reputable lab analyze the samples as well.
Where to find information:
Environmental Integrity Project’s Ashtracker
Earthjustice’s Mapping the Coal Ash Contamination
Ask questions of your state, city or county environmental agencies about the quality of the water downstream from the power plant. Find out whether the local or state government is regularly monitoring the nearby groundwater or water downstream from power plants. It is important to review or compile data that tell the story of the problems that you are witnessing.
Ask your state agency to review permits and information about water quality standards. Ask your state agency if the river, stream or waterbody is on an impaired waters list and if it has a cleanup plan known as a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL plan). Ask for discharge reports for facilities. If you need help understanding these documents, turn to the Waterkeepers and other groups listed above. If things don’t look right in the reports, the facility may be out of compliance with its permit.
Take action:
If you find pollution violations, ask if the state environmental agency is taking corrective action. If you find ongoing violations that the state has not addressed, turn to the Waterkeepers and legal resources listed above for advice and assistance in filing a Clean Water Act lawsuit. You can also alert local media about the potential or actual contamination of waterways and drinking water sources such as wells.
Applying the Clean Water Act to the Susquehanna River stories
The Clean Water Act does not allow any discharge of pollution from a pipe (and many other discrete conveyances such as ditches) UNLESS the discharger gets a permit from the state that prescribes what they must do to treat the pollution and what level of control they must meet.
STEP 1: These discharges must be controlled by a permit called a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit. For coal ash disposal facilities, the NPDES permit for the industrial waste water at the power plant may include the coal ash ponds and pits, and there may be industrial stormwater NPDES permits for the coal ash disposal facilities and/or the power plant. Any of these permits may have helpful information for your investigation. Details about requirements of Pennsylvania’s NPDES permits can be found online, and information about specific facilities can be found on the EPA Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website.
STEP 2: In order to determine whether the permits establish the appropriate levels of control, we first need to know what Pennsylvania has officially declared as “uses” of the waters below the two power plants in the Susquehanna River basin AND what limits on pollutants are necessary to fully protect those uses. Those uses and protections are part of the state’s Water Quality Standards.
In the case of the Middle Susquehanna River, the Montour Power Plant discharges to Chillisquaque Creek, and Pennsylvania has designated that tributary for Warm Water Fishes and Migratory Fishes.
In the case of the Lower Susquehanna River, the Brunner Island Power Plant is on the mainstem and is impacting Conewago, Hartman, and Cordorus Creeks upstream and downstream. Pennsylvania has designated that stretch of the mainstem and all the creeks near the Susquehanna as Warm Water Fishes and Marginal Fishery.
STEP 3: Tributaries of the Susquehanna River downstream of these coal ash disposal facilities that are on Pennsylvania’s Impaired Waters List because they don’t support aquatic life. These tributaries include several segments of the East Branch Chillisquaque Creek for siltation from agriculture and Black Gut Creek (a.k.a. Hartman Run) without a cause or source. The list is required by the CWA and is used to:
- Document problems that have been identified.
- Prevent any existing or new permits from allowing pollution that will “cause or contribute” to these problems/impairments.
- Require development of a water quality restoration plan for the stretch of water body that is listed as impaired.
STEP 4: Once impairments are identified in any river segments, development of water quality restoration plans called Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) is required. The TMDLs should require modifications of upstream permits such as those related to the power plants and ash disposal facilities.
Of the listed tributaries, the East Branch of the Chillisquaque Creek is a restoration priority, but Hartman Run is listed as “4c” which means the problems are not specific pollutants and there is no intention to develop a water quality restoration plan is
STEP 5: If permittees are violating their permit, the public that is or may be adversely affected by ongoing violations are allowed to file a lawsuit (River Network’s CWA Owner’s Manual p. 136) against the entity violating. In the case of each of the ash disposal sites, this public lawsuit option was on the table. In the Lower Susquehanna River, it was employed to bring action on the Brunner Island facility.
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