National Public Radio: The Environmental Protection Agency has issued new national standards designating coal ash - a nearly ubiquitous byproduct of coal-fired power plants that contains arsenic and lead - as non-hazardous waste.
NPR's Christopher Joyce reports that coal-fired power plants produce more than 130 million tons of the coal ash each year and they have long stored millions of tons of it in giant ponds.
But many of those ponds have failed in recent years, allowing contaminated water to get into rivers and...