February 26, 2010 -- The Coal Ash disaster and its effects continue in Tennessee.  CBS 42 reporter Cynthia Gold reported on it here, while Bruce Nilles, Campaign Director for the Sierra Club, spoke with residents of Southeastern Ohio, including Elisa Young, and listened in on a call with the White House Office of Management and residents who are affected.

Elisa Young was interviewed by Deep Down in our early stages of research, when we traced the "chain of power" from the Appalachian Mountains to Ohio.  There,  Elisa and her neighbors are surrounded by four power plants within an eleven-mile radius) and are experiencing extremely high rates of cancer. Elisa told us that most of the particulates from coal-fired power plants, which have a multitude of related health effects, fall within fifteen-miles of a power plant.  In her neighborhood, they were surrounded by something that could very well kill them, and several of Elisa's neighbors had already passed away.

In Nilles' report in the Huffington Post today, he states that there are hundreds of coal ash storage sites in the U.S. (see a map below), and that they contain arsenic, selenium, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, boron, thallium, and aluminum -- all toxic materials that are likely contributing to the high cancer rates experienced by communities living in the shadows of coal-fired power plants.  Read Nilles' full article here.

Watch Deep Down's People Power episode about Southeastern Ohio, Elisa, and her neighbors:

The Sierra Club provides many ways that you can take action on coal ash.