Coal ash slurry made headlines when a lake of it spilled on a Tennessee community in 2008 — but a far bigger story is the possible toxic heavy metal contamination of water by hundreds of other coal ash pits and ponds across the country. If your local utility burns coal, there is likely an environmental story about coal ash to be reported near you.

Now it emerges that there are even more coal ash sites than were previously acknowledged or listed by EPA. A Freedom of Information Act request by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice produced the identities of an additional 451 coal ash dumps, raising the total to at least 1161.

• A full database of all the sites [2] is available from EIP.
• EIP press release of June 26, 2012. [3]
• Aerial photos and other information [4] about many of the coal ash sites can be found at SourceWatch.
• Previous story: WatchDog of January 13, 2010. [5]