Kentucky’s Ashen Promises - The Margin

From the front window of her sky-blue home, Gertie Hendricks, 65, can see the long rivers of steam that breathe from three coal stacks. Since 1972, the plant has dominated Hendricks’ skyline, so monopolizing that some locals call it “the cloud maker.” 

Plumes form from burning coal for electricity at the Mill Creek Generating Station, the last utility-scale coal-fired power plant in Jefferson County, Kentucky. The plant operates between the banks of the Ohio River and a low-income neighborhood called Valley Station less than 15 miles southwest of downtown Louisville. The city has repeatedly failed to meet the EPA’s air quality standards for ozone, becoming one of the 25 smoggiest cities in the U.S., according to the American Lung Association’s 2026 State of the Air report.

Air pollution is a known problem for Hendricks’ community. What’s more obscure are the health risks from the waste left behind by combusted coal, known as coal ash. Proposed federal regulations coming from the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency could make finding and cleaning up that waste even more difficult.

Walking barefoot along the horseshoe of her driveway in May, Hendricks said she’s long worried over the health impacts from the plant.

That waste, known as coal ash, has been dumped within at least six sites across Mill Creek’s 544-acre footprint, enough to fill more than 6,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Contaminants within the ash can cause cancer and other serious health effects. But for decades, coal ash was poorly regulated by the federal government. The grey sludge, often kept in place by mixing the featherlight dust with water, leached from unlined pits into groundwater, surface water, and soils. Meanwhile, dried ash took to the air and traveled for miles into the surrounding communities, landing on windowsills and migrating into children’s bedrooms. 

Coal ash contains higher concentrations of contaminants compared to the original rock. According to a January 2026 report filed by the plant’s owners, Mill Creek’s coal ash sites are leaking heavy metals like arsenic, molybdenum, and lithium. Arsenic is a known carcinogen; molybdenum can cause achy joints and lead to liver and kidney damage; and lithium is a metal associated with multiple health risks, including neurological damage. 

For decades, electric utilities avoided monitoring and cleaning up their waste. Then came a pair of disasters in 2008 and 2014 where coal ash broke from a dam at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee and a pipe at the Dan River Steam Station in North Carolina, clogging waterways and leveling homes.In 2015, President Barack Obama’s administration finally took action to protect communities from coal ash, requiring groundwater monitoring and cleanup plans. 

The industry’s own data, compiled by Earthjustice, an environmental nonprofit that has litigated numerous coal ash cases, showed that coal ash at nine out of every ten power plants polluted groundwater. In 2023, the EPA announced that cancer risks from arsenic and radiation in soils containing coal ash were high enough to require further regulation. Under President Joe Biden, the EPA doubled down, adding the protection of communities from coal ash contamination to a national priority list as one of its most critical charges. 

But the heyday of federal coal ash oversight has atrophied, and long-fought-for improvements are under threat again. Most states, including Kentucky, rarely regulate coal ash beyond permitting facilities and largely rely on federal oversight for enforcement. 

“Team Kentucky’s focus is to make sure our communities and our natural resources are protected from any adverse effects of coal ash storage. We do this by working with our utility companies and property owners, but also within the constraints of federal and state laws,” Robin Hartman, spokesperson for the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, the state agency responsible for environmental and natural resource regulatory enforcement, said in an email. 

Five days before President Donald Trump was sworn in for the second time, 10 utility executives, including the owner-operator of Mill Creek, asked Lee Zeldin, a fossil fuel evangelist and then-nominee for administrator of the EPA, in a letter to overhaul environmental laws, including nascent regulations on coal combustion residuals, a wonky name for coal ash. The last signator, John R. Crockett III, is president of Kentucky’s two companies that form the state’s largest utility, Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Energy, LLC, or LG&E/KU.

The EPA acquiesced in April, first proposing a new rule that would allow states and utilities to bypass standing regulations for coal ash cleanup, and then reopening a case for a new permitting system that could further weaken requirements. In an emailed statement to The Margin, an EPA spokesperson described the proposed changes as “a major improvement over the Biden-era rule.” They continued, “Under the proposed new compliance pathway, permit authorities could tailor requirements to site-specific risks and incorporate advances in monitoring and corrective technologies.” 

In late June, LG&E/KU filed comments supporting those amendments, highlighting the need to delegate the federal coal ash program to state authorities, enhance flexibility for compliance options, and remove provisions for specific sites called Coal Combustion Residuals Management Units. Earlier that month, the Trump administration doubled down, announcing $700 million in taxpayer funding to keep coal alive. The budget included $124 million on upgrading three coal plants in Kentucky, which is home to eight operating coal plants, the majority of which line the Ohio River. 

“The two things are part and parcel of one another,” said Gavin Kearney, deputy managing attorney for Earthjustice’s clean energy program. “Eliminating coal ash protections is a way of helping coal plants prosper.

Now, the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, the state agency responsible for environmental and natural resource regulatory enforcement, is seeking approval to self-implement permits and efforts to clean up coal combustion residuals (CCR), another name for coal waste.   

“The EEC has been developing new regulations for (CCR) that, if approved, would protect Kentuckians’ public health, ratepayers, and the environment by enabling additional oversight from the state and allowing the cabinet to evaluate each facility individually,” Hartman said in an email. “The proposed regulation would require CCR owners to get a permit similar to those acquired by landfills and require the facility to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the structural stability, groundwater quality, and all remedies for coal ash impoundments."

Advocates warn that under new coal ash proposals, utilities could potentially close coal ash ponds that are in contact with and contaminate groundwater, which the current rule forbids, without first cleaning them up. The rollbacks also relax some monitoring requirements for cleaning up contaminated groundwater. In addition, the proposals could exempt hundreds of large piles of ash from any oversight by rolling back a 2024 rule that expanded the definition of coal ash sites. This proposal could allow state regulators to shortcut or eliminate coal ash protections, leaving citizens to challenge a utility's plans for its coal ash cleanup on a site-by-site basis. This would be a Sisyphean task. In Kentucky, there are at least 87 coal ash sites; across the country there are more than 1,000, according to Earthjustice. Experts said they estimate the weakened rules to be finalized by the end of this year. Mill Creek likely has at least three Coal Combustion Residuals Management Units (CCRMU’s), according to data collected by Earthjustice. 

Folks like Hendricks, who often had multiple jobs at a time while raising two kids and caring for ill relatives, don’t usually have time or resources to play watchdog to powerful utilities. She inherited her house from her mother, who died three years ago from lung cancer, and lives in it with her sister. Her daughter lives in a house Hendricks owns on Rainbow Drive, the last line of homes before the green lawn of the plant property begins. Most families like hers living near coal ash sites depend on federal regulators to ensure their safety from toxic and sometimes unstable ash impoundments.

LG&E told The Margin the utility would publish a report defining its CCRMU sites, in compliance with regulations, which LG&E has asked the EPA to rescind. During the licensing process for two new gas units at Mill Creek, one proposed and one under construction, LG&E disclosed the plants would be built on an old storage site for Posotech, a low-grade concrete material manufactured with coal ash, LG&E/KU spokesperson Andrew Gardner said in an email. He added, “It is likely the Mill Creek site has other CCRMU given the existing rule’s definition of CCRMU.”

Fewer than half of Kentucky’s coal ash sites are reliably monitored by the federal government. Self-reported industry data show that all but one have contamination levels above safe drinking water standards. That includes Mill Creek, where heavy metals can be found at levels triple groundwater protection standards, finding pathways to the Ohio River and off the plant’s southern edge. Regardless, LG&E plans to keep Mill Creek burning coal. 

Gardner said in an email that the utility “is properly managing the site to protect public health and the environment,” and complies with the 2015 Obama-era rule pertaining to closing impoundments, operating its landfill, monitoring groundwater, and notifying regulators about constituents of concerns and remedies.

In June, Congressman Morgan McGarvey, whose district covers Mill Creek, signed a separate letter to Zeldin asking the EPA not to weaken coal ash regulations that could expose working-class communities facing disproportionate environmental burdens to dangerous contaminants. 

“They’re not located in rich neighborhoods,” McGarvey told The Margin of coal ash sites in his state. “They are already in places where it will hurt even worse for people who have suffered from pollution and being dumped on for years and years.

II. Kentucky’s ‘deregulatory mania’

When Thomas Edison began burning coal at Pearl Street Station to illuminate households in lower Manhattan in 1882, the commercial power he created made commercial-scale waste. 

In the century and a half since, billions of tons of coal ash have been stored in landfills (when dry), ponds (when wet), and haphazard holes. Those dumps, largely unlined, often border rivers and streams, since coal plants need water to create steam and cool the generation systems. Pollutants from those sites could continue contaminating groundwater for hundreds of years, according to Nick Torrey, coal ash attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit focused on legal advocacy and environmental protection in six southern states.

Since the 1980s, the coal industry has found loopholes to avoid the overwhelming scope of its waste problem. After the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was enacted, governing the disposal of waste, the 1980 Bevill Amendment granted polluters regulatory relief by classifying coal ash as a non-hazardous waste, which allowed the industry to continue to dispose of it in landfills and ponds. The EPA reaffirmed that decision in 1993 and 2000, but environmentalists have long protested this exception, arguing coal ash contains dozens of heavy metals and radiation that would qualify other materials as hazardous. 

Kentucky has long been a leader in coal power, a trend on the decline. About 67% of the state’s power grid came from coal in 2024, down from more than 90% a decade earlier. Coal power declined as natural gas became cheaper, the coal supply diminished, and the global energy market pulled away from one of the world’s dirtiest fuels. 

While there has been a reduction in coal, a rapid increase in electricity demand and a failure to quickly transition to renewable alternatives means coal continues to stick around. Last year, LG&E/KU projected its energy demand could double in the coming years, largely from data centers. Activists against data centers in Jefferson County are pushing back against LG&E/KU’s request to build more gas and extend coal, which they say will fuel projects like the 400-megawatt data center approved by Louisville regulators about 12 miles north of the plant.

The map below displays coal ash sites and data centers across Kentucky and near its border, with each site's status available by hovering over its location. The Ohio River is highlighted in red to illustrate the concentration of these sites near major waterways. The map also includes county-level census data showing the percentage of residents who identify as people of color.

Meanwhile, state lawmakers have made it exceedingly difficult to transition to cleaner sources of energy. A pair of laws passed in 2023 and 2024 made it more difficult to retire fossil-fired units and to replace fossil fuels with most renewables. Republican legislators during this year’s session proposed rolling back state environmental regulations under a bill that would make it impossible to pass state environmental laws in Kentucky that are stricter than federal laws. 

“There’s a deregulatory mania in Kentucky right now,” said Michael Washburn, executive director of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance, a nonprofit focused on protecting state waterways.

That pro-coal stance could influence older facilities like Mill Creek, which once had four coal-burning units. One retired in 2024, replaced by a gas turbine still under construction. LG&E/KU also asked the state to build a second gas turbine at Mill Creek and extend the life of the third coal unit until at least 2031. Previously, that stack was slated to retire next year. Two more could be retired in 2035, according to LG&E/KU 2024 integrated resource plan, but that decision will be reassessed in the utility’s 2027 plan. 

“We fully believe these investments are in the best interests of our customers and the communities we’re proud to serve, and they build upon our history of continuous environmental improvement initiatives and major equipment investments at Mill Creek,” Gardner wrote in an email.

Keeping coal burning will cost ratepayers, critics say. Coal generation is expensive, and so is building new gas-fired units, according to a 2025 report by the Kentucky Resources Council. The state could save electricity customers $2.6 billion by mid-century if utilities transitioned away from coal and gas to renewable energy and battery storage, according to the report, potentially reaching a 95% clean energy portfolio by 2050 without increasing costs to consumers.

Ann Gunter, a 72-year-old who moved into her home near Mill Creek in 2003, said she was told the plant would be converted to gas by 2006. More than 20 years later, she said she’s still waiting, frustrated by the soot that accumulates on her house and car. LG&E/KU told The Margin it was not familiar with these claims and was actively transitioning portions of generation on the Mill Creek site from coal to natural gas. Gardner said Mill Creek Unit 5, the first combined cycle gas plant at the site, should be operating by spring 2027.

“They keep telling us, ‘next year we’re converting to gas,’” Gunter said from her front porch, wiping dust off the railing. “And next year never comes."

III. Between Rainbow Drive and the ‘Cloud Maker’

Beneath the towering Mill Creek station, along Rainbow Drive and on surrounding streets, dogs bark. Day lilies bloom orange. Tomato and cucumber starts wait in plastic trays on the patio. Robins’ feet click on the gutters, and cardinals perch on the edge of a bird bath shaped like a sunflower. Canadian geese fly against grey clouds. 

Then a flood warning pings cell phones around the time Lauren Hollobaugh opens the front door of her home bordering a grassy beam that functions as a floodwall. The 33-year-old human resources specialist lives on nearby Tennis Boulevard, with her mother and two kids. Her family is beset by several health conditions. Her mom and son have kidney disease. Her daughter and her mother have eczema. She has sensitive skin, so exposure to chlorine or too much sun causes her to develop rashes.

The Margin knocked on more than 60 doors in May. Some residents, especially those with children, expressed concern about their proximity to Mill Creek but struggle to connect their ailments to their high-polluting neighbor beyond anecdote. However, not everyone feels the same about this neighbor. Some support coal keeping the lights on. Others are indifferent. One neighbor insisted the plant did not burn coal anymore. 

Wilbur, a Spanish-speaker from Venezuela who works night shifts as a Walmart custodian, moved here two years ago with his son and a friend. He said he worried at first, but he hadn’t noticed any health issues. Vina Duncan, a woman in her nineties who moved to the neighborhood 30 years ago from Harlan County, said nothing about the plant bothered her.

But many are worried about the risks to their health and property that living so close to the plant poses while having little insight into the federal changes afoot that could remove guardrails for the plant’s pollution. 

Burning coal produces particulate matter, tiny bits of soot that can trigger asthma and cardiovascular issues. Hendricks has suffered from allergies, and Hendricks’ neighbor, Sherry Fitz, developed allergies after moving into the neighborhood. Every morning, she said she smells chemicals. She has to dust every day. 

Fitz moved onto Betsy Ross Drive when her daughter was three years old, making her a “smokestack baby,” a nickname for the little ones who grow up in the neighborhood, Fitz said. The now 12-year-old has allergies and depression, and her 17-year-old sister lives with social anxiety. Fitz said she doesn’t interact very much with LG&E but recalled a book giveaway by the utility at Watson Lane Elementary, then her kids’ school.

“You're hurting my kids’ insides, but you’re going to give them a stupid book?” Fitz recalled thinking. That school has since closed. A second school in the area, Frost Middle School, also closed, and was later purchased by LG&E. In an email, Gardner said the purchase was to support current and future operations at Mill Creek as the utility plans to build a warehouse there to support the operational needs of Mill Creek’s gas units. 

Soot has fallen in the neighborhood, for about half a century. Marla Patterson, who grew up here, moved back in 2000, said fine black residue coated her outdoor toys as a child. She and her family have long lived in the area and, by her account, she has been significantly impacted by the plant. 

Patterson recalled that her grandparents bought one of Valley Station’s first homes back in the 1940s when the neighborhood was sparsely occupied. Years later, it became a subdivision. Patterson was born in 1967, a year before construction began on Mill Creek. After moving back, Patterson was leaving for work one morning in her brand new black Kia Sephia when she saw tiny white flakes floating in the air. She drove to Timmy’s Auto Wash on Dixie Highway to wash off the dots spotting her car, but the soap and water only made the white specks brighter. She called LG&E to complain, but she said the utility only offered a car wash. The paint job on the new car was ruined, Patterson said. Worse, Patterson, who grew up with symptoms of bad asthma, alleged that she ended up with pneumonia after the incident.

“Anything that sits outside is basically destroyed,” Patterson said. 

Her dad, who never drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes, died of liver cancer less than three months after his diagnosis, Patterson recalled. Her mother has dementia. Patterson works in health care, shuttling between three jobs at a local nursing home, a west end hospital, and a teaching gig at Sullivan University.

“I knew living by LG&E was a bad thing,” Patterson said. But she came back to help her family and take care of her grandmother, and she stayed.

Some neighbors who answered the door for The Margin relocated here because homes offer some of the cheapest property values in Louisville, the state’s most populous city. Alfredo Carballo opened the door to his sister’s house, where she lives with her mom and two young children. They get sick more often in this neighborhood, with cold symptoms including a cough, Carballo said. They spent months trying to sell the home but couldn’t find a buyer, so they took the house off the market.

Patricia Myers, 61, was diagnosed with small cell carcinoma, a highly aggressive form of cancer that typically originates in the lungs, last October. She’s lived in her house, bordering a chain link fence with LG&E/KU since 2008, after growing up in the neighborhood. Myers said she lost several childhood friends to cancer, but gesturing to stubbed-out cigarettes on her patio table, she said she couldn’t necessarily attribute her illness to the plant when she’s also been a longtime smoker. 

One woman, who asked not to share her name, spoke through her living room window after peeling back a lace curtain. She said the issue used to be bigger, but the state and the federal government didn’t seem to care very much anymore. Her next door neighbor, she said, died of throat cancer. 

LG&E/KU told The Margin it wasn’t familiar with these complaints.

“LG&E investigates all complaints, operates in strict compliance with operating permits including dust control plans, and strives to be a good neighbor,” Gardner wrote in an email. “We’re continually monitoring, measuring and reporting the plant’s performance to appropriate federal, state and local regulatory agencies, and we operate Mill Creek and all of our power plants under federally enforceable operating permits.”

The neighborhoods around Mill Creek suffer broader cumulative and synergistic effects of environmental injustice, according to Tony Arnold, a law professor at the University of Louisville who runs the Resilience Justice Project, an organization whose work includes a focus on the environmental and community needs around the Mill Creek watershed.

Along with the Mill Creek power plant, there’s the Kosmos Cement Plant across the street from the Mill Creek landfill, the car exhaust along Dixie Highway, and the chemical plants just north in Rubbertown. 

“A lot of communities, a lot of neighborhoods that are marginalized have fewer resources,” Arnold said. That includes a lack of information about the plant, its emissions, and the regulatory bodies that oversee it. Rollbacks on climate science at the federal level also limit research into how climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, could impact Mill Creek’s coal ash.

“With extreme flooding, if there’s some sort of accident or unintentional release or if it’s not managed properly, there are all sorts of things that could go wrong, and the fact that we’ve already had discharges in the past tells you that things can go wrong,” Arnold said. 

In a “worst-case” flooding scenario modeled in a 2017 LG&E report, Rainbow Drive, where Hendricks’ daughter lives, could have been under five feet of contaminated water from the now-closed coal ash pond within an hour of a flood event.

IV. Cancer in coal country

Mill Creek has one active coal ash landfill, a roughly 14-story behemoth sandwiched between the Ohio River and Dixie Highway, an artery that helps connect metro Louisville to nearly 1.4 million people. The plant also houses five closed coal ash sites, including a large closed coal ash pond that borders the river and the Mill Creek watershed. Standing in the woods below the terraced rows of gravel, the chemical smell of the closed pond is inescapable. 

Both the landfill and the pond are leaking contaminants into the Ohio River and onto an industrial property south of the plant, according to a January report filed by LG&E. At least 17 out of 29 monitoring wells at Mill Creek had tests showing contaminants above federal groundwater protection standards. Arsenic, lithium and molybdenum exceeded those standards dozens of times across two testing events in April and September of 2025. Cobalt exceeded those standards twice and thallium once.The report said these contaminants weren’t likely to measurably increase concentrations in the Ohio River, where residents boat, fish, and recreate. LG&E reported and made publicly available its own monitoring data, as required under the 2015 rule, but so far no enforcement actions seem to have been taken by the federal or state government to bring the utility into compliance after its most recent report.

Arsenic, a known carcinogen found at least once at Mill Creek at levels 37 times the federal standard, exceeded the groundwater protection standard seven times last year. Lithium exceeded the threshold across at least 10 wells, sometimes measuring more than seven times the standard. Molybdenum at least tripled the groundwater protection standard seven times, exceeding the threshold across eight wells.

For many people, connecting their health concerns to coal ash is exceedingly difficult. Science shows that dozens of elements in coal ash — including arsenic, mercury, lithium, lead, selenium, and radium — can be dangerous and even deadly to humans. But tying coal ash to a specific person's ailments likely requires studies based on evidence of community or workplace exposure, according to Kristina Zierold, a public health professor at the University of Mississippi. 

And so far, little proof exists, which is largely a missed opportunity, Zierold said. While at the University of Louisville, her research focused on communities bordering Mill Creek and Cane Run Generating Station, another former coal plant owned by LG&E/KU that converted to natural gas in 2015 and then spent years closing its coal ash sites. 

Zierold began door knocking in the Cane Run and Mill Creek neighborhoods in 2012. She sent letters about her study through a mailing list of the 12-ZIP code area and slipped flyers under the windshield wipers of teachers’ cars in local schools. She took out Facebook ads and stood in store parking lots near the plants handing out information. Parents told her about learning difficulties, poor school performance, and the prevalence of ADHD among kids in their neighborhood, challenges Zierold knew were also seen in kids exposed to heavy metals. They also reported asthma and respiratory problems, along with trouble sleeping.

Shoeleather epidemiology eventually introduced Zierold and her fellow researchers to roughly 280 kids, aged 6-14 years old, and their families. They would become the participants in an almost $3 million study from the National Institutes of Health exploring how children’s neurobehavioral problems at home and school could be connected to coal ash exposure. Researchers set up devices to collect air samples in their homes, took dust samples in the children’s bedrooms and family rooms, and periodically collected nail clippings from children to test for heavy metals. 

Under a microscope, the air samples showed 43 percent of 261 kids’ homes contained cenospheres. These are glassy, spherical particles that form when minerals melt during combustion and reform in exhaust steam, according to Zierold. Those cenospheres meant coal ash was present in almost half the homes. Children with coal ash in their homes had increased levels of iron, aluminum, and silica in their nails, all contaminants found within coal ash. Zierold worked closely with a psychologist and found a relationship between coal ash exposure and elevated levels of depression and lower school performance among the kids. 

“There needs to be a ton more funding and a ton more research on this,” Zierold said. But she’s struggled to secure funding to move the research forward.  Zierold would have liked to study adults after hearing about high rates of cancer in the communities near Mill Creek and Cane Run from residents. Counties closer to coal-fired impoundments tend to have higher cancer rates, according to a 2026 spatial association analysis led by Charlie Zhang, an urban and health geographer at the University of Louisville also involved in Zierold’s research.

The map below shows the annual cancer incidence rate across the United States, measured as the number of new cancer cases per 100,000 people. Kentucky is highlighted with a red outline.

Much of Kentucky is dark red on one of the study’s maps in Zhang’s research. Kentucky is one of the top five states when it comes to the number of coal ash impoundments, and ranks highest for both cancer incidence and mortality. Those cancer rates are often attributed to social determinants like low education and high poverty rates, with high rates of tobacco-, obesity- and HPV-related cancers. Research connecting cancer to coal ash is often marginalized, according to Zhang, especially in coal country.

Coal ash, Zierold said, “affects so many people, and a lot of people don’t even know they’re being affected by it, and that’s the sad thing. It’s very sad.”

While Zierold was working on her health study, she was approached by lawyers representing a group of workers who alleged they were sickened from cleaning up the Kingston coal ash disaster across the stateline in Tennessee. The lawyers wanted Zierold for consulting, but because her research focused on kids, not adults, she declined. She called the limited research a shame.

Now, the utility in charge of the Kingston spill, the Tennessee Valley Authority, is issuing its own “scientific context” about coal ash. Angie Mummaw,  an organizer with the environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices,attended a meeting in April about the extended retirement dates for the two coal units near the Cumberland Fossil Plant about 70 miles west of Nashville. Mummaw encountered a woman holding a booklet of TVA fact sheets who told her that the amount of molybdenum, a coal ash contaminant detected at Cumberland, was equivalent to what a person would eat in a serving of black-eyed peas; she also compared the amount of arsenic found at the plant to what a person might get from a glass of wine or a cup of hot chocolate. TVA’s fact sheets read, in part, “Coal Ash is Not Hazardous” and included the statement “the constituents of coal ash are nearly identical to common soil.”

TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks said in an email that the fact sheets referenced were developed to help advance public understanding using information and data from credible third-party sources.

“They are intended to provide scientific context about coal ash and to illustrate that many of its naturally occurring constituents are also found throughout the environment,” Brooks wrote. He said the common narrative around coal ash isn’t rooted in reality or informed by the extensive science, monitoring, and regulatory oversight that govern its management today.

V. ‘Can Kentucky do something?’

Well over one hundred people signed up to speak at the EPA’s virtual public listening session on the coal ash rollback in late May. So many that the agency had to extend the session, keeping people across the country glued to their computer screens from 9 am to 7 pm. The 141 speakers were from faith organizations, environmental groups and nursing associations. They were Tribal members, scientists, attorneys, parents and neighbors living near coal ash sites. 

Susan Wind, an activist who used to live in Lake Norman, North Carolina, spoke about the cancers children in her neighborhood were diagnosed with in a community she said was built on top of coal ash used as fill for the development. They included her daughter, who was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at 16 years old.

“The word of the day is betrayed,” said Wind. “Betrayed not just by a utility company that put profit over people, but by the very agencies sworn to protect us, you especially, the EPA.” 

She came from a state with some of the strongest regulations in the country. After the Dan River disaster in 2014, North Carolina passed the Coal Ash Management Act, going beyond federal regulations, forcing Duke Energy to excavate and close leaking coal ash sites. Michael Regan, former head of the state’s Department of Environmental Quality, helped negotiate Duke Energy’s cleanup, developed the state’s clean energy plan,and later helmed the Biden administration’s EPA. 

“We have a coal ash program that does work,” said SELC’s Torrey, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “It’s the only one like it in the country.” 

A system with loosened regulations on coal ash, like what Trump’s EPA proposed, could allow utilities to pressure regulators into accepting inadequate monitoring or cleanup plans, critics say. Activists like Wind would continue devoting their lives to challenging such plans on a case-by-case basis instead of working with the federal government to protect them. States would become the new watchdog, and most states aren’t ready, let alone interested, in policing the coal industry.

Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, North Dakota, and Wyoming have authorized state CCR permit programs, the EPA press office said in an emailed statement, and the agency has proposed approval of three other state CCR permit programs in Virginia, Louisiana, and Alabama.

The Kentucky EEC targeted September to formally file regulation changes to join these ranks, pending a comment period and public hearing.

“Can Kentucky do something? Yes, they can,” McGarvey said. “But the reality is the states, including Kentucky, do not have the resources to do this. They know it. That’s why they’re doing this. They’re trying to give coal companies and big corporations a pass so that there is going to be no accountability.” 

Back on Rainbow Drive, Hendricks stood in her front yard. 

“Are the federal rules changing on this? That’s crazy,” Hendricks said. Her neighbor, Roger Mills, a resident in his 70s, stood outside his front door, with his dog peering through the glass. 

“It’s the dirtiest place I’ve ever lived in my life,” Mills said.“It’s got to be unhealthy breathing it.” But he had little information and few resources. Mills spends his days taking care of his wife with dementia, who grew up in the house where they now live. 

While they breathed, the plant burned on.

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