OLD KING COAL
between $12 and $20 per hour —
good wages for the area — while
the coal ash was being delivered.
Most of those jobs are now gone,
and the landfill employs fewer
than 10 people, although that
number may go up if more coal
ash can be found, something that
Turner and other supporters are
unabashedly hoping will happen.
Gipson and other residents argue that there were other ways
of generating income for the area
— including investing in tourism
or outdoor recreation. Uniontown, they point out, is just 30
miles down the road from Selma,
the birthplace of the civil rights
movement, and it also has rich
potential as a hunting and fishing
corridor. Even if these wouldn’t
amount to much, they argue, no
one bothered to ask them whether
they would mind if the landfill
they never wanted in the first
place suddenly became, in addition to a household waste facility,
the final destination for millions
of tons of coal ash.
“They can see that landfill
right here in the people’s face,”
Calhoun says, gesturing to the
mountain across the road. “You
can see how close it is. Can’t nobody tell you — they can’t tell
you if coal ash is toxic or not. You
never get a direct answer.”
In a conversation with The
HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
Huffington Post, Scott Hughes, a
spokesman for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, and Phil Davis, head of
the agency’s Solid Waste Division,
explained that the coal ash was
carefully segregated from other
waste streams, as per EPA requirements, and that odds were
slim that any coal ash wafted offsite or otherwise migrated onto
surrounding properties.
They were less clear about
whether the stuff poses a health
risk:
HUFFINGTON: Is coal ash a concern
for human health? That’s what
I’m asking you.
PHIL DAVIS: It’s not a hazardous
waste.
SCOTT HUGHES: I cannot answer
that question. The only thing I can
say is that our responsibility is to
issue permits that are protective
of human health and the environment. And then ensure that we
have a field presence to ensure
that facilities are operating in
compliance with those permits.
H: I don’t mean to belabor the
point, but as the Department
of Environmental Management,
which also takes into consideration the protection of human
health, ADEM must have some
opinion or thought on whether
coal ash is safe?