Arsenic and Old Ash

The corporate gift that just keeps on giving! Some 13 coal ash ponds on the Yadkin, the French Broad, and five other North Carolina rivers are leaking arsenic, cadmium, chromium, and lead -- metals known to cause cancer, neurological problems and other serious illnesses -- at levels, in some cases, exceeding 380 times state groundwater standards.

Three of the waste ponds border the Catawba, which supplies drinking water to the greater Charlotte metropolitan kingdom.

But, who cares, really? Don't coal ash ponds signal JOBS, JOBS, JOBS? So what if a few hundred people get weird cancers? Who'll ever prove it was because of the drinking water?