My Water Is Not Safe to Drink | From The Ashes

WOMAN: Here's my first letter. It tells me I got to have re-sampling. A month later, a little over a month later, again, my well water is not safe to drink. Then the third letter I get says my water is safe to drink, almost 11 months later. [inaudible] are leading in the nation in coal ash clean up. This ain't leading no nation in coal ash cleanup. Telling people to drink contaminated water that you have told me twice not to drink— that's not being a leader.

What you have is a system guaranteed to pollute, a system of primitive storage we wouldn't allow anyone else to do, and a system that is primed for catastrophe. Every day they are polluting groundwater, rivers, and lakes with toxic metals. The companies have a reason not to clean up— they can't afford to and still make coal profitable. If you took all the profit that's made burning coal, it's not enough hours to clean up after the mess that coal leaves behind.

Coal ash is an enormous problem across this country. There are about 1,000 coal ash sites with very heavy levels of pollution, ultimately ending up in some waterway that people are relying on for drinking water. It's a ticking time bomb for millions of Americans. OK, what you need, baby? Gas. Go on, go on. Fill her up. Send her on down.

We know that Duke Energy is never going to admit this, because if they do, there's six other states waiting to pound on them. We know that. We just want them to do the right thing. Clean the mess up. Clean up their own trash on their own property, just like they would expect us to do. And provide us clean, safe water. We know too much now to turn around and back up. And we are not going away. [music playing]