The Ottumwa-Midland Landfill, a coal combustion residual landfill, has been operating in Ottumwa, Iowa, near Des Moines, since 1981. It’s co-owned by Interstate Power and Light, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy, and MidAmerican Energy, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The facility, which accepts coal waste from the nearby Ottumwa Generating Station and other power plants in the region, discharges heavy metals into the Des Moines drinking water supply and releases coal ash laced with mercury and other pollutants into the air. After the landfill changed longtime site supervisors this summer, residents, including rural Iowan homesteader Connie Hammersley-Wilson, watched plumes of ash pump into the sky.
Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!
As told to Samantha Johnstone by Connie Hammersley-Wilson:
I was outside this summer, working with my horses, when all of a sudden, this big plume went into the sky from the nearby Ottumwa-Midland Landfill. It nearly scared me to death, because I had never seen anything like that. I’ve lived here for over four years, and nothing like this has ever occurred before. I grabbed the horses, brought them to the barn, and immediately ran inside myself.
When I first purchased this house in 2021, I actually went down to the county supervisor and asked about the landfill. You can see it from my kitchen window, so I wanted to make sure it was safe to live so close to it. I was told there was nothing to worry about.
This facility is classified as a coal combustion residual (CCR) landfill, which is a special type of landfill that processes coal ash, the leftover mineral waste from coal burned in power plants. There is a large ash pond at this site, where they dilute the coal ash in water to prepare it for disposal.
About two or three times a day, trucks would drive shipments of coal ash to the facility to be watered down and dumped at the site. There was netting over the ash hills that ensured nothing escaped, and you could really tell the supervisor had a level of care and accountability for myself and my neighbors. He would frequently check in to make sure the trucks and heavy equipment were not being too loud, and I even had his personal cell phone number and was told to call if anything made me uncomfortable.
Earlier this year, the supervisor gave me notice that 8 to 10 trucks would soon begin to roll through daily, bringing in almost triple the amount of coal ash. I was informed that Cedar Rapids had tons of toxic waste that they needed to get rid of, and my backyard was unfortunately chosen to manage and dispose of it as quickly as possible.
Then in July, I was warned that he was retiring, and things were going to change. And they did.
Previously, the site had been very careful when watering down the toxic waste and coal ash, to ensure it didn’t contaminate the water or air. But now, I think they are taking a lot more shortcuts. I don’t see the same level of netting on the hills across the landfill. They are trucking the contaminated water to our city waste treatment plants, which aren’t equipped to filter out the toxins and heavy metals. This means toxic and heavy metal coal ash pollution is ending up in the water we rely on for drinking, fishing, and recreation.
Photo courtesy of Connie Hammersley-Wilson.
Some people may think it is out of sight and out of mind, but I literally share a fence with this coal ash landfill, and I am very concerned about the lack of care coupled with the increase of toxic waste shipments. Air pollutants from coal facilities like this one, such as mercury, benzene, soot, and ground-level ozone, can cause asthma attacks, lung cancer, and strokes.
My horses are getting older, and I am very worried about the air they breathe and the hay they eat. All my children are grown, but if I were raising kids right now, I would deeply consider relocating. Mercury exposure from this facility could hurt kids’ brain development.
What’s hardest is that I love this town, and I love this house. I grew up in Ottumwa; my father was the vice principal of the high school; my children were raised here—my roots are so deep. For over 14 years, we searched for a home with the perfect horse acreage. And when this property went on the market, I got phone calls from three different realtors saying they found me the perfect place. We put almost all our retirement money into this property. I don’t want to move.
In November, I wrote an op-ed published in the Des Moines Register that called out the Ottumwa coal ash landfill for discharging water contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals into the drinking supply for decades. It was disappointing to find out that even under the careful eye of the previous site supervisor, the utility had still been discharging polluted water underneath the landfill into a wetland and creek that flows into the Des Moines River. This has been ongoing for 25 years.
I also have been working with Moms Clean Air Force, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Sierra Club, and other community members to speak out about these impacts. We are currently working to set up a screening of the film, Iowa’s Dirty Secret: The True Cost of Coal Burning, to help our community understand the health risks we are facing. While details are still in the works, it is also publicly available to watch on YouTube.
In addition to the health risks, I’m also watching my electricity prices skyrocket at a rate that I am not equipped to keep up with. Rural Iowan residents pay the highest electric rates of all Alliant Energy customers, and it is continuing to increase. I’ve been a homeowner in Ottumwa for over 40 years, and I have never seen electricity bills grow at this rate. It is disappointing to watch Alliant astronomically raise prices, but the utilities board is allowing them to get away with it.
At the end of the day, one company is putting our lives in danger and knowingly deciding to kill people. They are poisoning our children and creating birth defects as they leak toxins into our water and into our air. Our state has one of the highest cancer rates in the nation, which has been linked to our highly contaminated air and water. Right now, I have five friends with cancer. Over the past few years, I’ve lost over a dozen friends and relatives to cancer, including my father.
It scares the hell out of me to watch Alliant Energy get away with this, and we have to get the word out about how dangerous this is.
Tell the Trump Administration: Don't Bail Out Coal. Protect Our Children's Health!