Ben Jealous: Forcing polluters to clean up their mess

Adobe Stock Photo & (TriceEdneyWire.com)—In Waukegan, Illinois, about 40 miles north of Chicago, Dulce Ortiz is celebrating with her children. Ortiz is a cofounder of the local environmental justice organization Clean Power Lake County. She has been organizing for years to get coal ash waste cleaned up from the site of the retired coal power plant in her town. The historic suite of power plant pollution standards announced last week by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) includes a rule that will finally force power plant owners to clean up their coal ash pollution. This is good news for Dulce Ortiz’s family and countless others, including the 30 million people who get their drinking water from the Great Lakes. Coal ash contains toxic pollutants like mercury, arsenic, and cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that leach into groundwater. And there are more than 100 coal ash waste sites along the shores of the Great Lakes. That includes legacy sites from retired plants like the one in Waukegan, which left two coal ash ponds and another coal ash deposit. Ortiz says, “My vision for my family and my community is a lakefront where I can take my children swimming in the waters of Lake...