Kingston Coal Ash spill

[LawBeefaroni]

"This makes Erin Brockovich and the hexavalent chromium look like Sesame Street"

Long read but the punchline is that it's a potential $2B case.

[Isgrimnur]

I read the article. Horrible stuff.

But we should totally deregulate industry...

[Pyperkub]

Coal needs to die...

Air pollution is estimated to have caused more than 100,000 early deaths in 2016. Most of these have come due to what are called fine particulates, which are small particles that can be readily inhaled and cause issues like stroke, heart disease, and lung ailments. So a group of researchers at Carnegie Mellon University decided to do an economic analysis of the issue for the United States. The researchers compared the costs of premature deaths from particulate pollution to the value added by the economic activity that produced the pollution to find out which polluting industries might provide a net benefit to the economy.

Their analysis showed that the plunge in coal use has caused electrical generation to shift from a net money sink to an economic positive. And that has left farming as the only major activity that generates more costs than it's worth...

...As these costs are definitely a low estimate of the total externalized cost of these industries, it's also not clear how best to approach the overall issue: that many US industries probably contribute more in costs than they contribute to the economy.