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→Water pollution, health risks, and regulations: corrected spelling error
As of June 2010, no federal regulations specifically govern the disposal of power plant discharges into waterways or landfills. Some regulators have used the Clean Water Act to try and limit pollution, but the law does not mandate limits on many dangerous chemicals in power plant waste, like [[Heavy metals and coal|arsenic]] and [[Heavy metals and coal|lead]].<ref name="nyt"/>
State officials sometimes place no limits on water discharges of arsenic, aluminum, boron, chromium, manganese, nickel or other chemicals that have been linked to health risks. According to a New York Times analysis of [[EPA]] records, 21 power plants in 10 states have dumped arsenic into rivers or other waters at concentrations as much as 18 times the federal drinking water standard. Only one in 43 U.S. power plants must limit how much [[Heavy metals and coal|barium]] is dumped into nearby waterways, despote despite being commonly found in [[Coal waste|power plant waste]] and scrubber wastewater and linked to heart problems and disease. EPA records indicate power plant landfills and other disposal practices have polluted groundwater in more than a dozen states, while a 2007 EPA report suggested that people living near some power plant landfills faced a cancer risk 2,000 times higher than federal health standards.<ref name="nyt"/>
Power plants have often violated the Clean Water Act without paying fines or facing other penalties: ninety percent of 313 coal-fired power plants that violated the law since 2004 were not fined or otherwise sanctioned by federal or state regulators. And fines are often modest: Hatfield’s Ferry has violated the Clean Water Act 33 times since 2006, but has paid less than $26,000, even as the plant’s parent company earned $1.1 billion.<ref name="nyt"/> According to the New York Times, after five states — including New York and New Jersey — sued [[Allegheny Energy]] to install scrubbers at one of its coal plants, the company began dumping tens of thousands of gallons of wastewater containing chemicals from the scrubbing process into the Monongahela River. The River provides drinking water to 350,000 people and flows into Pittsburgh.<ref name="nyt"/>
