From the Environmental Integrity Project:

After 7 Years of Delay, EPA Files Only Released After Obama Administration Took Power; Five or More High-Risk Sites Found in 20 States: AL, GA, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, MD, MI, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, WV, WI and WY.

Later this week, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) and Earthjustice will release government files withheld by the Bush Administration for more than seven years showing dramatically higher than previously reported cancer and non-cancer risks to Americans living near landfills and wet ponds used to dispose of ash and scrubber sludge from coal-fired power plants. Each year, coal-fired power plants dispose of nearly 100 million tons of toxic fly ash, bottom ash, and scrubber sludge in landfills and wet ponds, such as the one that burst in Kingston, TN in December 2008.


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Analysis by the EIP and Earthjustice of the long-sought EPA data on 210 coal-ash dump sites across the United States will show extremely high cancer and non-cancer illness risks to Americans as a result of arsenic, boron, cadmium, cobalt and lead and other toxics in drinking water contaminated by coal-ash dump sites.

The report, to be released later this week, is based on information that the Bush Administration refused for years to disclose. For example, a 2002 EPA screening study was not made public until March 4, 2009 -- seven years after its publication. Freedom of Information Act requests to EPA during the Bush Administration were denied or resulted in the production of documents with the risk estimates blacked out. The new EIP/Earthjustice report will show exactly what was being withheld by the Bush Administration and what it means in terms of health risks for Americans.

Five or more high-risk sites were found in 20 states: Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.