INSTITUTE INDEX: Why coal ash is an environmental justice issue

Number of Americans who live within three miles of a coal-fired power plant, which typically stores toxic coal ash waste in unlined pits that aren't currently subject to federal oversight: 6 million

Their average per capita income: $18,400

Average per capita income for U.S. residents overall: $21,587

Percent of people living within three miles of a coal plant who are people of color: 39

Percentage points by which that exceeds people of color's representation in the overall U.S. population: 3

Number of the nation's 378 coal-fired power plants that received an "F" in a 2012 report because they're responsible for a disproportionate amount of pollution in low-income and minority communities: 75

Average per capita income of the 4 million people who live within three miles of those failing coal plants: $17,500

Percent who are people of color: 53

Number of the nation's power companies that got an "F" in the report, including Duke Energy: 12

Average per-capita income of people living within three miles of Duke Energy's Dan River plant near Eden, N.C., where a Feb. 2 coal ash spill has contaminated the waterway for 80 miles downstream: $15,772

Percent of the state's average income that amount represents: 77.7

Percent of the residents of Danville, Va., a community downstream of the spill that draws its drinking water from the Dan, who are people of color: 53.3

Percent of Virginia's population overall that is non-white: 36

While the population living within three miles of the Dan River plant is not disproportionately minority, the percent of people living within a mile of Duke Energy's Belews Creek plant in Stokes County, N.C. and its Sutton plant in New Hanover County, N.C. who are: 60

Amount that the community near Duke's Sutton plant will have to pay for a new water line because of groundwater contamination from the leaky coal ash pits: $472,000

Risk of cancer for people living within a mile of unlined coal ash pits: 1 in 50

Number of times that exceeds what the Environmental Protection Agency considers an acceptable risk: 2,000

Number of times more likely it is for someone living near a coal ash pit to develop cancer than someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes per day: 9

Rank of African Americans among the U.S. racial groups with the highest cancer incidence and cancer death rates: 1

Rank of African Americans' lower socioeconomic status among the reasons for that disparity: 1

(Click on figure to go to source.)