Legal settlement ensures toxic coal ash will be removed from flood plain of Illinois’ only national scenic river
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Nudged by the media attention and lawsuits filed by nonprofit groups, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency took a closer look at the Vermilion County site, located a few miles downstream from a popular kayak and canoe launch where the Middle Fork winds through moraines that interrupt the region’s flat farmland.
Concerns about the Middle Fork also helped persuade state leaders to adopt new regulations requiring Vistra and other energy companies to clean up coal ash dumps near two dozen other power plants, most of which will be closed by the end of the decade. “This is a great victory,” Andrew Rehn, senior water resources engineer at the Champaign-based Prairie Rivers Network, said about the legal settlement approved Thursday by a Vermilion County judge. “Now we have firm deadlines for restoring this stretch of the Middle Fork to a wild, natural, scenic river.”
Andrew Rehn of Prairie Rivers Network looks at coal ash seepage on a bank of the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River in 2018.
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