Rural America

Columbia power plant opts for “clean closure”

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While Columbia has been proactive about cleaning up its coal ash — cinders that it used to spread on icy and snowy streets in the winter — it still gets 70 percent to 80 percent of its energyfrom coal-fired power plants in the Midwest, and most of that comes from the Sikeston Power Plant in southeast Missouri and the Prairie State Energy Campus in Illinois.

Rural America

Residents concerned about groundwater pollution from coal ash ponds

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For decades, coal ash has been stored in ash ponds, many of which lie in flood plains or in water tables where groundwater can flow through the ponds into nearby wells, aquifers or rivers. For many small communities across the nation, clean groundwater is an essential resource for drinking water.

Rural America

On the farm, children face the risk of injury, death

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About three children die from a agriculture-related incident every day, according to a 2018 factsheet from the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, which holds child-injury prevention workshops and provides guidance for prevention programs and training to professionals.

A quarter of the deaths involved machinery, 17% involved motor vehicles like ATVs and 16 percent were drownings. Other causes include suffocation, electrocution, animals, being struck by a falling object and falling.

Rural America

Residents Seek Answers About Health Risks Near Frac Sand Mines

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When Jim and Kathy Kachel moved into their home south of Bagley, Wisconsin, overlooking the Mississippi River in fall 2007, they couldn’t see the Pattison Sand Mine directly across the river in Clayton, Iowa. Since then, terraced layers of limestone carved into the northeast Iowa bluff have made way for more truck traffic as the mine, which occupies 750 acres — much of it underground — expands. Meanwhile, the Kachels have had to clean dust from their home.