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Coal Ash Is Killing 900,000 Fish Each Year In A North Carolina Lake, Study Finds
Coal Ash Is Killing 900,000 Fish Each Year In A North Carolina Lake, Study Finds | ThinkProgress
Coal probably kills near a billion animals per year and you want to debate dead animals? Takes nerve.
Coal ash is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of fish in a North Carolina lake, according to a new study.
The study, commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center, looked at more than 1,400 fish from Sutton Lake and found some species showed deformities such as curved spines, misshaped or missing fins, and mouth and jaw defects — defects that the study said are consistent with elevated levels of selenium, a toxic element found in coal ash. Dennis Lemly, a research professor at Wake Forest University who conducted the study, said concentrations of selenium in Sutton Lake were “five to ten times the toxic threshold for the beginnings of deformities.”
“Selenium is well-known to cause deformities and abnormalities in young fish,” he said. “Deformities of all sorts of bony structures in the fish — everything from the mouth, to the skull, to the spine, to the tail, to the fins. You name it.”
Because these deformities can kill young fish, the study estimates that about 900,000 fish are killed each year due to selenium exposure, a monetary loss of between $4.5 million and $7 million each year for the popular fishing lake.
Sutton Lake has long served as a cooling lake for a Duke Energy coal-fired power plant, and though Duke retired the plant’s coal-burning units last month, a group of environmental organizations is pushing the company to clean up coal ash from the lake. In September, the Southern Environmental Law Center and three other environmental groups filed suit against Duke Energy for its failure to clean up coal ash from Sutton Lake.
Coal Ash Is Killing 900,000 Fish Each Year In A North Carolina Lake, Study Finds | ThinkProgress
Coal probably kills near a billion animals per year and you want to debate dead animals? Takes nerve.
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