The AES Corporation, based in Arlington, Virginia has settled a lawsuit accusing the power-generating company of allowing one of its units to dump coal ash on beaches in the Dominican Republic, which allegedly caused a spate of birth defects.
The trial was due to start in Delaware this week and the terms of the actual settlement have not been released.
Families of three Dominican children born without limbs and suffering gastrointestinal problems and other defects, were seeking about US$30 million in damages. The case was the first of more than a half dozen due for trial.
Handling of ash generated by coal-fired power plants has been a major environmental issue in the United States over the last 20 years with an estimated more than 1,000 ash-holding sites around the US where 140 million tons annually gets dumped.
The parents of Maximiliano Calcano, Isael Altagracia Andujar and Estanlyn Garcia Deogracia, the three Dominican children, sued AES in 2009.
Back in 2007, AES agreed to pay US$6 million to settle a suit filed by the government of the Dominican Republic over coal-ash dumping when the government alleged that an AES unit illegally dumped more than 57,000 tons of the ash in Manzanillo and Samana Bay from its coal-fired plant in Guayama, Puerto Rico.
The lawsuit stated that the parents believed AES officials had misled them and Dominican officials into thinking that the coal ash wasn’t toxic and could be used by the residents of Samana as construction material.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/aes-settles-suit-over-coal-ash-dumping-in-dominican-republic
http://breakingenergy.com/2014/02/18/can-coal-fly-ash-waste-be-put-to-good-use/
