The Decade in Review: Looking Back on 10 Years in Green
2000: Near midnight on October 11, 2000, the bottom of a coal ash impoundment in Martin County, Kentucky, breaks, spilling toxic sludge into abandoned mine shafts. The spill eventually finds its way into the Tug Fork River, Wolf Creek, and finally the Ohio River. An estimated 306 million gallons of sludge rises up to five feet high in places, polluting the drinking water supply of more than 27,000 people, and killing all aquatic wildlife in Coldwater Fork and Wolf Creek. The spill is 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill and is considered one of the most severe environmental disasters in United States history.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
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