HUFFINGTON
06.17.12
OLD KING COAL
coated their yards and fruit trees
and cars, or as a pasty mud that
rolled across the road and into
nearby ditches and streams.
Federal and state lawsuits
against the operators of the site,
filed amid the coal ash deliveries,
are pending. In January, Gipson
and other Perry County residents
also filed a civil rights complaint
with the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Now here’s what my concern
is,” says Gipson, who has lived
most of his life in and around
Uniontown, the dilapidated hamlet that is the dump’s nominal
home. “I got five grandkids, and
they’ll be playing out there in the
yard every day. All five of them
play there in the yard daily. But I
don’t know what they’re going to
catch from this landfill.”
“They would protect
an animal before they’d
protect humans.”
— Uniontown resident
on environmental regulators
BUZZARDS AND DOGS
On a recent afternoon, Gipson sits
on the porch of his neighbor, Dora
Williams, along with Esther Calhoun, another outspoken critic of
the landfill.
Staring out at the coal ash
mound, all three share recollections of the parade of developers,
politicians, journalists, lawyers
and state and federal regulators
who have drifted in an out of the
area since their battle against
the placement of a landfill near
Uniontown began almost a decade
ago. Recalling the coal ash deliveries, they talk of a year or more of
relentless noise, foul odors, sore
throats, watery eyes and worries
about the quality of the groundwater they drink.
Though it’s quieter these days,
and the stench comes less often,
they bemoan the swarms of buzzards and packs of dogs that have
taken a liking to the landfill — the
latest insult to a country corridor
that they once cherished. And they
worry that it is only a matter of
time before more coal ash, from
some other facility in some faraway state, or even from Alabama’s
slew of loosely regulated holding
ponds, begins rolling in again.
Calhoun is particularly incensed with the EPA and the
state’s environmental regulator, the Alabama Department of