Ash Heap
The power plant is gone. The poison spreadsheet is still updating.
Consumer-facing coal ash contamination intelligence — an automated public-interest site that turns scattered coal combustion residuals (CCR) compliance filings, groundwater monitoring reports, enforcement actions, and plant metadata into county-level risk maps, plant report cards, contamination timelines, and brutally readable explainers for people living near old and active coal plants.
Niche Explored
Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR / “coal ash”) contamination accountability — aggregating scattered compliance data from 500+ power plant disposal sites into consumer-facing scorecards, groundwater contamination maps, and enforcement accountability journalism.
Existing Competition
- Earthjustice — Coal Ash Contaminated Sites Map (earthjustice.org/feature/coal-ash-contaminated-sites-map) — static reference map listing contaminated sites with legal citations. Not updated frequently, no automated data pipeline, no community-level narratives, no scorecards. Advocacy-focused rather than data journalism.
- Environmental Integrity Project — occasional reports on coal ash damage cases, but no automated site, no continuous tracking.
- EPA ECHO — raw data portal for compliance/enforcement. Powerful but completely inaccessible to ordinary people. No narrative, no context, no risk scoring.
- Sierra Club / Appalachian Voices — advocacy pieces about specific sites, not systematic tracking.
- Local news outlets — cover disasters (Dan River spill 2014, Kingston TN disaster 2008) but no ongoing tracking between crises.
Gap: Nobody is systematically scraping the 500+ compliance websites, aggregating groundwater monitoring data, correlating it with nearby population demographics, and publishing readable accountability scorecards. The data is PUBLIC by law — it’s just scattered across hundreds of individual utility websites in PDF format.
Data Sources Found
- EPA CCR Compliance Website Registry — https://www.epa.gov/coal-combustion-residuals/list-publicly-accessible-internet-sites-hosting-ccr-management-compliance — Master list of every regulated facility with direct links to their compliance data. Updated regularly (last update March 20, 2026). Organized by state. Free, public.
- ECHO REST APIs — https://echo.epa.gov/tools/web-services — RESTful services for facility search, enforcement case search, RCRA hazardous waste data. JSON/XML output. Free, no API key needed. Can query by facility ID, geographic coordinates, zip code, state, program type.
- ECHO Data Downloads — https://echo.epa.gov/tools/data-downloads — Bulk CSV downloads including RCRA hazardous waste handlers, enforcement/compliance monitoring data, community demographics. Weekly refresh. Free.
- ECHO Exporter — 1.5 million+ regulated facilities with 130+ data fields including lat/long, violation history, inspection frequency, penalty amounts. ZIP download, updated weekly.
- EIA-860 / EIA-923 — https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia860/ — Power plant-level data: capacity, fuel type, retirement status, ownership. Can correlate with CCR sites. Free annual/monthly datasets.
- Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) — https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program — Annual release data by facility for arsenic, mercury, selenium, chromium, lead, and other coal ash contaminants. REST API available.
- Census Bureau / ACS — Population demographics for census tracts near each facility. API available.
- EPA Enforcement Alert (Dec 2023) — https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/ccr-enf-alert-2023.pdf — Documented “significant noncompliance” areas: closure deadlines, groundwater sampling, contamination cleanup.
- Individual facility CCR compliance websites — Required by law to post: groundwater monitoring data, annual reports, closure/post-closure plans, corrective action plans. PDFs and spreadsheets. ~500 unique facility sites.
SEO Analysis
- Keywords: “coal ash contamination near me” (low competition, genuine search intent)
- “coal ash groundwater contamination” (moderate, mostly legal/advocacy sites)
- “coal ash pond map” (low competition, Earthjustice dominates but static)
- “is coal ash dangerous” (high search volume, mostly generic explainers)
- “arsenic in well water near power plant” (very specific, zero good results)
- “coal ash disposal sites near me” (underserved, EPA’s own site is hard to navigate)
- Long-tail opportunity is enormous: “[city name] coal ash contamination”, “[power plant name] groundwater data”, “[utility name] coal ash violations”
Communities
- r/environment — 2.1M subscribers, coal ash posts get engagement
- r/NorthCarolina, r/Virginia, r/Indiana, r/Georgia — state-specific coal ash concern
- Appalachian community groups — high concern about legacy mining/power plant impacts
- Environmental justice groups — coal ash disproportionately affects low-income communities of color
- Well water forums — homeowners near plants worried about groundwater
- Hunting/fishing communities — concerned about watershed contamination
Image/Graphic Feasibility
- Excellent. This is a map-heavy, data-visualization-heavy topic:
- National facility map with contamination status icons (green/yellow/red)
- State-by-state facility density heatmaps
- Groundwater contaminant level time-series charts (arsenic, selenium, boron over years)
- Population exposure rings (how many people live within 1/5/10 miles)
- Enforcement timeline graphics (violation → notice → penalty → resolution)
- “Report card” scorecards for each facility (letter grades A-F)
- Comparison charts: contaminant levels vs EPA MCLs (maximum contaminant levels)
- All can be generated programmatically with D3.js, Chart.js, or Mapbox
Sources
- https://www.epa.gov/coal-combustion-residuals (main EPA CCR page)
- https://www.epa.gov/coal-combustion-residuals/coal-ash-rule (rule history)
- https://www.epa.gov/coal-combustion-residuals/list-publicly-accessible-internet-sites-hosting-ccr-management-compliance (facility list)
- https://www.epa.gov/coal-combustion-residuals/enforcement-initiative-alert-and-settlements (enforcement)
- https://echo.epa.gov/tools/web-services (APIs)
- https://echo.epa.gov/tools/data-downloads (bulk data)
- https://earthjustice.org/feature/coal-ash-contaminated-sites-map (competition)
- https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2023-12/ccr-enf-alert-2023.pdf (enforcement alert)