Cutting Down on Air Pollution Has Other Impacts

In Pennsylvania a coal-fired power plant is owned by a company, Allegheny Energy, and was for years seen responsible for letting way too much air pollution out of its smoke stacks. Five states, including New York had sued the company on allegations that its pollution is causing respiratory disease and acid rain throughout the region. So three years ago in an attempt to silence complainers the energy company installed scrubbers which are devices that spray water through the smoke being emitted through the smoke stacks. The devices saved the air 150,000 tons of air pollution a year. The problem with this great cut in air pollution came at a cost to the local water supply. The company had to dispose of this waste water it was producing from the new scrubbers. The company decides to irresponsibly dumb all of this waste water into the nearby Monongahela River. Now that the company has cleaned up its act with air pollution, it is simply switching to poisoning the nearby people with water pollution now. This river provides 350,000 people with drinking water, and is now polluted with poison. The government is now limiting emissions of power plants into the air but according to this New York Times article only about 1 in 43 power plants nationwide are restricted on how much waste they can dump into the nearby waterways. In order for these power plants to continue to run, scientists must work together with environmentalists to find a responsible way to dispose of all of this water produced by these scrubbers that does not include dumping into nearby water systems. There must be a way to chemically clean out all of the toxic chemicals in this water before it is dumped. Even better, how about we invest our time and money into renewable energy plants, so that this is not even a problem. Coal and Oil fueled power plants pose nothing but health risks and environmental problems.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/us/13water.html?ref=earth