Sure there's technology to filter the water, but why would they speak up about it until they are forced? And how much more will that technology add to the cost of coal? Its cost keeps rising as renewables' keeps falling.

Even when they clean up coal just a little (and of course except for the carbon), coal is filthy and unhealthful. Scrubbers are in part a shell game to keep fooling the public while keeping coal affordable and profitable by leveraging gimmicks and loopholes to keep externalizing the major costs onto the public--especially future costs.

It's time to phase coal out completely. The time it takes to do so, even at the fastest pace feasible, will ensure that the dirty coal barons will get along just fine and that all our power needs will have plenty of coal baseload (to fill solar power gaps) until renewables can catch up in that one area of performance where coal still has some advantage.

I had an annoying chat with a TVA mid/upper-management type not long ago that gave me insight as to how that organization discourages its employees from taking renew-ables seriously enough to challenge the all mighty coal god.
Apparently it is gospel within TVA that wind can never be a viable power source because it can't meet "peak demand".
Absolute BS.
For one thing, if you build enough turbines you will meet your peak demand.
For another, there are a wide range of energy storage systems out there.
For example you can store wind power in the form of compressed air that you store in appropriately sealed underground chambers and natural caverns. If there's one thing we've got around here its caverns.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed-air_energy_storage

-Sugarfatpie (AKA Alex Pulsipher)

"X-Rays are a hoax."-Lord Kelvin