In March 2019 the National Coal Ash report was released sponsored by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earth Justice discussing groundwater that's been contaminated in the United States by coal ash. Coal ash is the waste that is left behind after coal is burned in power plants.
According to the report, 241 of the 265 coal-burning power plants that they surveyed in the US have toxic metals in surrounding groundwater above EPA limits. They monitored 4,600 wells where sites had cadmium, lithium, cobalt, selenium, arsenic, lead, molybdenum and radium. Some of these at hundreds of times the safe limit according to the EPA.
Unfortunately there is a vast opportunity and need for techniques to clean these groundwater contaminations.
