A 56-foot statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of blacksmithing, watches from a ridge above Birmingham. From the 1880s to early 1900s, the “Magic City” erupted as a significant industrial center for the southern US. It was one of the few places on earth to contain iron, limestone, and coal, all three resources necessary to produce steel. The city’s population boomed with the sudden need for factory workers; mines sprouted across Alabama to feed the blast furnaces in Birmingham. The steel and coal-mining industries quickly replaced Alabama’s agricultural economy.
Today, Vulcan looks over a city where old slag furnaces and historic skyscrapers hint at a prosperous industrial past. With only 14% of the state’s energy generated by coal in 2023, the resource extraction and industrial chapter of Alabama’s past is largely closed. But a dangerous legacy of this industry lingers in the environment, threatening human health and wildlife and posing serious environmental justice concerns—coal ash. Alabama is at the center of debates over how coal ash can be disposed of and how we deal with the legacies of harmful fossil fuel industries as the country transitions to other energy sources.
Before 1970, few restrictions existed on burning coal. Smog filled with sulfur oxides and particulates choked cities and acid rain ruined whole ecosystems. The Clean Air Act of 1970 limited how industries could burn coal. Instead of releasing these harmful substances into the air, facilities captured the smog and stored it as a wet slurry in impoundments. This coal ash is one of the largest sources of industrial waste in the US with almost 69 million tons produced in 2020.
Scoliosis due to selenium poisoning was first observed in 1980 after a coal ash spill at Belews Lake, North Carolina.
Coal ash retention ponds are toxic time bombs. Over the past 20 years, US facilities have deposited coal ash containing an estimated 183,000 tons of arsenic, 116,000 tons of chromium, and 1,300 tons of mercury into impoundments. These heavy metals can leach from unlined ponds into the groundwater, poisoning nearby drinking wells. If the containment dam breaks—as these structures made of piled earth often do—they release waste known to have carcinogenic and negative neurological effects on humans. Nearby wildlife is destroyed. Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy nonprofit, found there are 746 reported coal ash retention ponds across the US. 91% of the facilities reporting groundwater quality exceeded federal safety standards.
The first coal ash spill with documented impacts on wildlife occurred in 1967. A dam broke and released coal ash into the Clinch River in Virginia, contaminating a 124-kilometer reach and killing an estimated 217,000 fish. Fish living in coal ash impacted waterways often develop scoliosis as an effect of selenium poisoning.
Coal ash policy finally started to shift after a massive spill in 2008 near Kingston, Tennessee. A dam ruptured and 5.4 million cubic yards of ash leaked into the Emory and Clinch Rivers. Dozens of homes flooded with carcinogenic sludge. In 2012, with Kingston as an example of the dangers of poorly managed coal ash impoundments, a group of environmental advocacy organizations sued the EPA to more strongly regulate coal ash disposal. The lawsuit was largely successful, and today the EPA requires states to have enforced coal ash waste permitting programs.
National policy may have shifted around coal ash, but the EPA’s new regulations did not protect Americans equitably. The NAACP’s “Coal Blooded” report shows that coal-burning plants and coal ash retention ponds are disproportionately located in low-income communities of color that lack the political power to fight polluters. The cleanup efforts for the 2008 Kingston spill are widely seen as one of the worst instances of environmental racism in recent US history. The EPA approved plans to move several million tons of ash from Kingston—a community that is 91% white and middle class—to Uniontown, Alabama, where the population is 90% Black, with most residents living below the poverty line. The ash was buried in Arrowhead Landfill despite organized coalitions and petitions from Uniontown’s residents. Community members complain that the ash has negative impacts on their health. In 2016, the US Commission on Civil Rights concluded the EPA failed in their legal obligation to consider the environmental justice impacts of relocating the waste to Uniontown.
The injustice surrounding Uniontown grabbed national media attention thanks to the work of grassroots organizers across the Black Belt. This past year, Alabama’s coal ash problems have resurfaced as a national news story. The EPA formally denied Alabama’s permitted coal ash waste disposal program in May 2024, making Alabama’s proposal the first and only state the EPA has rejected. Additionally, in January 2023, the EPA initiated a lawsuit against the state’s largest utility company, Alabama Power, over groundwater contamination concerns at Plant Barry. The facility stores a quarter of the total volume of coal ash in Alabama. Alabama Power and the EPA settled in October 2024, but local environmental groups are concerned the coal ash will continue to threaten human health and the vulnerable community of biodiverse species native to Mobile Bay.
Coal consumption has declined 63% since the US’ peak consumption in 2008. This statistic could be a story about a nation recognizing the existential threat of climate change and transitioning away from a fossil fuel known for its negative environmental impacts. But as coal ash in Alabama shows us, greenhouse gas emissions are not the only cause of climate injustice. The US coal economy is shrinking, but the afterlife of the industry haunts the environment and the people who live there.
Coal has always been a source of environmental injustice in Alabama. In 1876, three-quarters of all state convicts worked in mines. At that time, ninety percent of convict laborers were Black. The success of Alabama’s coal economy depended on an unpaid and abused labor force justified by racism. Over a century and half later, the harmful impacts of coal are still targeted towards socio-economically marginalized Alabamians. This “fossil fuel racism” places the external costs of coal extraction, burning, and waste storage onto people of color and low-income communities. Coal ash is a warning: Climate injustice has its roots in racial and economic discrimination. Clean energy transitions alone cannot be the solution.
RCC National Environment Leadership Fellow – Benjamin Trost – University of Alabama
Benjamin is a senior 2024 Udall Scholar studying freshwater science and environmental humanities at the University of Alabama. He combines data science, ecology, and sociopolitical approaches to examine issues of environmental injustice in his home state of Alabama. His passion for research has led him to collaborate with the Black Warrior Riverkeeper on water quality advocacy and publish on the politics of plant conservation.