Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) “Power plants produce about 130 million tons of contaminated waste every year, and the federal government has failed to regulate it.” Across the nation, coal-fired power plants aren’t just polluting our skies and water. Each year, they generate millions of tons of waste contaminated with toxic metals -- more than two-thirds of which is dumped into landfills, storage ponds or old mines or otherwise stored somewhere, just waiting for disaster to strike.
More than four hundred forty existing coal-fired power plants in 47 states produced over 126 million tons of coal waste in 2005, contaminated by over 91 thousand tons of toxic metals. This table lists totals by state, ranked by total coal waste per state.
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https://www.nrdc.org/issues/dirty-energy
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