In 1954, the Peeler family signed an agreement to lease 6,000 acres of their 25,000-acre Texas ranch for a lignite coal mine. A few years later, they sold an additional 300 or so acres of their property to a small electric cooperative, which had taken over the mine, for the construction of a new coal-fired power plant. The family thought the arrangement would provide them with a modest income from the leases and felt they were playing a part in the electrification of rural Texas, which was then still underway.
The hulking coal plant, owned by the San Miguel Electric Cooperative, was eventually built and came online in 1982. Situated among the rolling hills, grazing cattle, and nodding oil pumps in Christine, Texas, 60 miles south of San Antonio, the 400-megawatt power plant, together with eight other rural co-ops, helps provides electricity to more than 200,000 customers in 42 rural counties across South Texas.
For years, the Peelers and the San Miguel cooperative coexisted peacefully, side-by-side. But no longer. The family and the co-op are now engaged in a bitter legal battle over the dumping of large amounts of coal ash — the toxic byproduct of burning coal — into empty mining pits and in ponds around the San Miguel plant. The soil near the various storage sites is now ashen, with silvery slicks of groundwater pooling on the surface. According to San Miguel’s own testing, pollutants from coal ash have leached into the groundwater around the power plant, with concentrations of cadmium, lithium, arsenic, and other contaminants at levels far exceeding those set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“It looks like a moonscape to me,” says Alonzo Peeler Jr., 79, whose grandfather signed the original agreement with what would later become the San Miguel co-op. The coal ash, says Peeler — a tall man with a high-pitched voice and a face that has been carved by a life spent working in the sun — “kills the vegetation, changes it, kills the grass, and blights the trees.” The Peelers say that the coal ash pollution has left portions of their ranch unsuitable for cattle grazing because the grass is unsafe to eat and the water unfit to drink. The mounds of toxic ash around the old mine are an unearthly contrast to uncontaminated sections of Peeler land, an otherwise gentle, dry landscape, where spring wildflowers create a mottled quilt of pinks, blues, and yellows.
Now the Peelers, a fifth-generation ranching family that has long been skeptical of the federal government’s reach, are looking to the EPA for help. For Alonzo Jr.’s son, Jason Peeler, who runs the family ranch, this struggle has changed his outlook on the role of government and the value of environmental regulation. “We [Texans] pride ourselves on being independent, even of our own government,” said the younger Peeler, 51. “Sitting at the ranch looking out the window at the plant, it’s hard for me believe that this [level of contamination] can happen.”
The family may not find a sympathetic ear in Washington. Despite several instances in recent years of major spills at coal ash ponds, resulting in contamination of rivers and groundwater supplies, the Trump administration has been working to reverse or relax the single federal regulation governing disposal of coal ash. In one of his first moves after taking charge of the EPA in July 2018, Trump appointee Andrew Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the coal industry, sought to reverse that 2015 rule. It is one of numerous actions taken by the Trump administration that are favorable to the coal industry and electric utilities.
The Peeler family saga is atypical of most coal ash pollution stories, since most plants or storage sites aren’t on someone else’s property. But the family’s struggle nevertheless highlights a growing problem with this waste product. Coal ash — which contains arsenic, mercury, lead, and other dangerous substances — is a particularly pernicious legacy of America’s reliance on coal. It is one of the country’s largest waste streams, with more than 100 million tons produced across the United States every year. The hazardous dust and sludge are stored in more than 1,000 bodies of water and landfills in nearly every state, posing potential risks to air, soil, water, and human health.
About a third of coal ash ponds are within 5 miles of a public drinking water intake or reservoir, and about 80 percent are within 5 miles of a drinking water well, according to the EPA. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has also found that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately impacted by coal ash pollution. Health experts say that long-term exposure to cadmium in drinking water, a coal ash pollutant, can cause kidney, lung, and blood ailments, including an increased risk of cancer.
According to a report from two non-profit groups, the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, the groundwater near 16 of Texas’ coal-fired power plants is contaminated with levels of arsenic, boron, cobalt, and lithium that exceed EPA standards and make it unsafe for human consumption. The report concluded that the toxins originated in the facilities’ coal ash storage sites. The environmental groups also found that 91 percent of coal plants nationwide have one or more coal ash pollutants in groundwater beneath their storage ponds at levels exceeding safe standards....
