Henry Henderson, Director, Midwest Program NRDC, Chicago, Illinois

In case you missed it, an aging pile of toxic coal ash adjacent to a Wisconsin coal plant collapsed into Lake Michigan early Monday morning. Yeah, that’s the beloved lake that is a source of recreation and drinking water for millions and one of the few rallying issues left in our political lives that actually has bipartisan support.

Monday, a bluff next to We Energy’s Oak Creek Power Plant collapsed sending dirt and coal ash barreling down to the Lake with enough force to topple structures and toss aside a pickup truck. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a "fuel sheen” could be seen on the Lake. Bad news. Worse news is that, even though some described the incident as a “freak accident,” it was not. This was a preventable mess. My colleague Meleah Geertsma notes that Dr. Donald Reed of the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission raised concerns about the structural stability of the bluff in meetings with the company and during proceedings in front of the Public Service Commission several years ago. According to "Dr. Don," the bluffs are inherently unstable, such that a collapse was entirely foreseeable and hardly an ...

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