Exploring the Role of Civic Monitoring of Coal Ash Pollution: (Re)gaining Agency by Crowdsourcing Environmental Information

A A Disaster Reveals the Dangers of Coal Ash

In 2008, an impoundment holding back a slurry of coal ash burst following heavy rainfall and caused a catastrophic release near Kingston, Tennessee,^[10] burying houses and dumping slurry into the Emory River.^[11] Coal ash, or waste leftover when coal is burned to generate electricity at powerplants, contains an array of toxic pollutants, such as arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, selenium, and thallium.^[12] For decades, the management strategy for this large waste stream in parts of the U.S. involved mixing the ash with water and directing the resulting polluted slurry into massive unlined basins^[13] that were separated from rivers and lakes by large earthen impoundments or dams.^[14]

Although the Kingston disaster exposed the structural hazard of leaving coal ash, steeping in a wet slurry against an earthen impoundment adjacent to rivers and lakes, this was only the beginning. The ensuing attention to coal ash basins would soon reveal that leaving coal ash steeping in a slurry would not just risk a catastrophic failure of the earthen dikes but would also allow pollution to migrate, leak, and seep into groundwater, rivers, and streams. Remarkably, it took an additional seven years after the Kingston disaster before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a federal rule targeting coal ash.^[15] This delayed response could be considered a governmental “failure” to which civic monitoring tried to respond.

In those intervening years, ENGOs whose missions included protecting rivers from pollution (often termed “riverkeepers”), began investigating coal-burning powerplants in their communities, including through civic monitoring. This article focuses on the role that scientific information collected by civic environmental organizations played in bringing about the cleanup in North Carolina of vast amounts of coal ash from 14 powerplants across the state. For years, ENGOs organized the collection of samples of potentially impacted streams and seeps. They also obtained and reviewed public records to ensure transparency and disclosure of contamination. They utilized online platforms to map risks revealed by the public data.^[16] These ENGOs also worked to educate communities about the risks of coal ash and turned to courts and other legal venues to compel compliance with water protection laws. Information they collected and provided to decision-makers was key in bringing to light the extent of the problem – ensuring the cleanup to address past contamination and mitigate future harm.

Although the broader cleanup spanned across 14 powerplants, this article examines two case studies as a basis to frame and explore the roles that scientific information collected by civic environmental organizations can play in prompting and sustaining enforcement actions in court and in exposing the magnitude of an environmental problem. The first case involves a coal-fired powerplant located along the French Broad River near Asheville, North Carolina, a small city in the Appalachian Mountains. The second is the Allen Powerplant, along Lake Wylie, near Gastonia, North Carolina.

The detailed accounts that follow aim to deconstruct our case studies regarding the manner environmental information was observed and gathered by individuals and civic organizations, how data visualization played a role in translating the scope of the problems to the wider public, and how these types of information can inform regulation and adjudication.

B An Insight into the Asheville Powerplant: The Investigation by Civic Groups and Pursuit of Enforcement

In January 2013, local community organizations^[17] notified Duke Energy, the largest utility in the United States, of their intent to commence a civil lawsuit for violations of the federal Clean Water Act^[18] at the Asheville powerplant.^[19] These organizations asserted that the company had stored a wet slurry of coal ash in large and unlined basins which was polluting streams, rivers and groundwater.^[20] A letter, giving notice of intent to commence a lawsuit is required as a pre-requisite to enforcing violations under the Clean Water Act’s citizen-suit provisions.^[21] This was the first in a series of such notices, sent by environmental and community groups in North Carolina based on sampling by local riverkeepers and information gathered through public records, that would allege Duke Energy’s handling of coal ash across its powerplants was violating the Clean Water Act.

Before pursuing enforcement, the community groups had reviewed public data and collected water samples to determine whether the powerplant’s coal ash basins were leaking pollutants. Potential polluted discharges were identified by visually observing riverbanks below the coal ash waste pits for indications of seepage, sometimes visible as orange discharge, indicative of iron-oxidizing bacteria in coal ash. At the Asheville powerplant, the French Broad Riverkeeper^[22] collected water samples from streams and seeps flowing from the impoundments toward the French Broad River.^[23] The process involved collecting samples of surface water in bottles, recording geographic coordinates, and delivering samples to private laboratories for analysis.^[24] Analysis revealed elevated levels of pollutants indicating coal ash, such as boron, cobalt, iron, and nickel.^[25]

In addition to investigating seepage, community groups obtained monitoring data from government authorities related to groundwater.^[26] This data also showed that unlined coal ash basins were polluting groundwater with pollutants like boron, iron, manganese, selenium, thallium, chloride, sulfate, and total dissolved solids.^[27] Despite years of data documenting groundwater contamination around the ash basins at Asheville, the agency was not requiring Duke Energy to take action to address the source of pollution.

Based on sampling results obtained, data in public records, and the inadequate enforcement by regulating authorities, the groups sent a notice of their intent to commence their own enforcement action against Duke Energy under the citizen-suit provisions of the Clean Water Act.^[28] Therefore, we can identify a clear link between the civic-collected evidence and the compliance failures that the groups aimed to demonstrate. The open disclosure of these failures, through the notice letters sent to the energy company and federal and state authorities, served as fora to confront and resist, ultimately embodying forms of agency from concerned citizens.

C North Carolina Initiates an Enforcement Action

In response to the groups’ legal notices, the State of North Carolina elected to initiate its own enforcement against Duke Energy in court.^[29] Federal law however precludes community groups from proceeding with their own citizen suit if, during that 60-day notice period, the “[s]tate has commenced and is diligently prosecuting” a civil action to require compliance with the same standard.^[30] However, groups and individuals can seek to join as parties in such enforcement actions (under the applicable rules civil procedure), and federal regulations implementing the Clean Water Act forecast this, in requiring states to allow for intervention as part of the Act’s public participation requirements.^[31] Relying on these authorities, the community groups sought to intervene in the state’s enforcement case and to participate in assuring enforcement addressed the violations identified by the community groups.^[32]

In support of their request to participate in the state’s lawsuit, the community groups presented their sampling results and observations of seeps and streams around the Asheville powerplant, and the results of groundwater monitoring data collected from public records.^[33] The groups tendered an expert opinion establishing that polluted groundwater was reaching the French Broad River, which was important in connecting migrating pollution to the interests of the community groups.^[34] The state’s inaction on coal ash despite years of monitoring data, they argued, demonstrated that the state would not adequately represent their interests in its enforcement case.^[35] This is another crucial passage for our argument that engaging with civic monitoring returned agency to the affected communities vis-à-vis the state’s inaction.

D The Abandoned Settlement and the Dan River Disaster

After initiating an enforcement case, and while the community groups were waiting for the court to decide their participation in the case, the state agency and Duke Energy negotiated a settlement to conclude the case at the earliest stage.^[36] The groups noted, in comments to the court, that the settlement agreement – negotiated without input from those community groups that had identified the violations – would not address the core problems of wet storage of coal ash in unlined lagoons and would perpetuate the ongoing violations of the law,^[37] requiring “years of study but little action.”^[38] In addition, the proposed settlement ignored structural concerns associated with the impoundments holding back wet coal ash – as EPA had rated Asheville’s impoundments as “High Hazard” because of the likely loss of human life if they were to fail^[39] and that the seeps could be indicators of structural problems.^[40] While review of the state’s settlement with Duke Energy was under consideration, the court granted permission for the groups to join the lawsuit.

Two things then happened that significantly expanded the scope of the lawsuits and catapulted them into the national spotlight (arguably enhancing civic agency on the matter). First, following similar notices sent by community groups for violations at two more facilities, the state decided to expand its enforcement strategy to cover all fourteen of Duke Energy’s powerplants across North Carolina.^[41] Civil society groups with local interests in each of these powerplants subsequently were allowed to participate in all of these cases. Second, as the swiftly negotiated settlement between Duke Energy and the state was pending consideration, in February 2014 a pipe ruptured beneath a coal ash basin. The rupture continued for days, causing a catastrophic release of 39,000 tons of ash and 27,000 gallons of polluted wastewater into the Dan River, with contaminants detected 70 miles downstream.^[42]

The Dan River disaster made clear that the risks of storing coal ash impounded in large pits beside rivers was anything but speculative and underscored the concerns being voiced by community groups. The state immediately withdrew from the proposed settlement, and the trajectory of the cases shifted away from the quick settlement originally envisaged by regulators.^[43] These cases would continue for several years, through 2020, before all of them were fully resolved. In the end, each community secured a commitment by the energy company to excavate coal ash from basins that were leaking into groundwater and rivers and streams.^[44] Neighbors living beside coal ash basins and using well water would have drinking water provided by new water lines.^[45] This successful outcome is a crucial element in our analysis as it demonstrates the potential to use CGE to demand and secure interventions and, ultimately, environmental justice.

A The Asheville Powerplant: Civic Evidence of Violations

The foundation for the Clean Water Act Notice of Intent sent in January 2013 for violations at the Asheville powerplant was citizen-collected evidence. The notice itself relied on sampling results from streams and seeps collected by the local riverkeeper, combined with the results of groundwater monitoring data obtained through public records and reviewed by the community groups (Image 1).^[65] When the state brought its first enforcement case in March 2013, the riverkeeper and other community groups relied on the sampling to demonstrate their stake in the outcome and justify their participation.^[66] Their sampling data and assessment of groundwater data, supported by an expert affidavit, also informed their opposition to the quick settlement that was proposed by Duke Energy and North Carolina – which the state eventually abandoned.

Image 1:

A snap of riverkeeper sampling at Asheville from CWA notice of intent (by SELC, used with permission).

Following the Dan River spill in early 2014, federal authorities launched a criminal investigation into Duke’s handling of coal ash.^[67] Federal charges in 2015 recognized that Duke Energy discharged pollutants through seeps at the Asheville powerplant, which were also observed by regulators in March 2013,^[68] following the riverkeepers notice. In 2015, Duke Energy entered a guilty plea for criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, including those committed at the Asheville powerplant, and was fined $102 million for violations at six facilities.^[69] Federal prosecutors, noted “repeated failures by Duke Energy’s subsidiaries to exercise controls over coal ash facilities” in North Carolina.^[70]

A year after community groups had prompted the state’s enforcement case, Duke Energy announced plans to excavate the coal ash at four facilities, including the Asheville powerplant. Duke’s commitment to excavate the coal ash basins at the Asheville powerplant were subsequently the foundation for a summary judgment order issued in the state enforcement case in favor of the community groups in 2016.^[71] The requirement to excavate the ash basins at Asheville also was cemented into a law passed by the North Carolina legislature in September 2014, the Coal Ash Management Act (CAMA).^[72]

The Asheville powerplant illustrates the potentially powerful role of CGE in triggering an enforcement action by authorities. Although the state agency at first attempted to cut enforcement short through a quick settlement, ultimately, the violations identified by the environmental organizations laid a foundation for federal criminal charges under the Clean Water and a complete excavation of coal ash from the ash basins, to address groundwater contamination and ongoing seepage. Due to their participation as parties in the state’s enforcement case, a move supported by their collection of evidence that precipitated the lawsuit, the community groups also were afforded an ongoing role in collecting evidence in the resulting injunction and were able to use the continued court jurisdiction to oversee the injunction.^[73] All of this is an excellent demonstration of the gained civic agency on the matter (Image 2).

Image 2:

A snap of Asheville coal ash site on well water contamination sites (by Southern environmental law center – SELC, used with permission).

B The Allen Powerplant: Evidence Gathering and Advocacy Contexts

Although the ash basins at four powerplants were to be fully excavated,^[74] Duke requested flexibility to consider alternatives at the other 10 powerplants, including leaving the ash in place and covered with a cap, essentially plastic sheeting and an added layer of soil.^[75] The state’s 2014 coal ash law, CAMA, deferred the closure and cleanup at the other ten powerplants to a risk-based legislative framework that would allow everything from leaving the ash adjacent to rivers with a cap, to partial excavation and partial capping, to complete removal of the coal ash from the basins.^[76] Although the community groups in Asheville (discussed above), found early resolution in a full cleanup, the scope of cleanup for the community around the Allen powerplant near Gastonia remained an open question. In the multiple administrative processes that followed, related to implementation of CAMA and amending Clean Water Act permits, community group efforts to gather evidence and disclose information obtained in public records played a key role leading toward the 2020 settlement.

At the Allen powerplant, the Catawba Riverkeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance for many years actively monitored the riverfront beneath massive coal ash basins,^[77] which sprawl 293 acres alongside Lake Wylie – a large lake in the Catawba River system that serves as a drinking water source for communities and is used for fishing and recreation.^[78] A residential neighborhood abuts one side of the powerplant and its coal ash basins (Image 3). As described by one Duke Energy engineer, for some homes, “literally their backyard is the ash pond.”^[79] The riverkeeper successfully joined the state’s enforcement action in 2013, alleging that its own inspections had identified discharges and flows from the coal ash lagoons.^[80]

Image 3:

A snap of Allen coal ash site on the well water contamination sites map (by SELC, used with permission).

Following the passage of CAMA, a years-long administrative process for closing the remaining coal ash basins and an effort to evaluate seepage at all of Duke Energy’s facilities began to unfold, alongside the pending enforcement cases.^[81] At various decision points, the state agency was required to consider public comments. Throughout, community groups continued to engage the legal processes with their own observations and data.

During this period of sustained advocacy, the riverkeeper continued to inspect the riverfront below the Allen coal ash basins and compare observations with the discharges being disclosed by Duke Energy. Duke Energy had indeed confirmed multiple areas of seepage from the ash basins into Lake Wylie,^[82] but the parties continued to disagree on the scope of seepage, its significance, and the appropriate regulatory response. As Duke Energy and state regulators proposed various mechanisms that would authorize ongoing leaks,^[83] the community groups, in opposing the approach as ineffectual, repeatedly pointed out polluted seepage being missed, with guidance from legal counsel (also an ENGO). These efforts included alerting authorities at multiple intervals to seepage problematically overlooked,^[84] including an old, corrugated pipe found during discovery in the enforcement case,^[85] and seepage unaddressed by a proposed consent order. Increasingly these efforts incorporated technology to pinpoint the environmental problems, for example, hyper-linking to online mapping spatially showing the location of overlooked seeps and providing video footage of ongoing seepage.^[86]

In addition to informing regulators of ongoing seepage from the ash lagoons at Allen, which had continued years after the initiation of the enforcement cases,^[87] community groups also worked to educate the community about the risks of coal ash.

For example, in addition to requiring the basins to close, the state’s coal ash law required Duke Energy to sample residential groundwater wells around its facilities and to provide alternate water supplies to impacted households.^[88] Dozens of houses adjacent to the Allen powerplant and reliant on well water received “do not drink” letters, some indicating the presence of pollutants like hexavalent chromium at levels that exceeded state health screening levels.^[89] In the absence of a comprehensive explanation from state authorities regarding the scope of the problem, community groups pushed to understand the broader importance of the notifications. After obtaining data from the results of testing hundreds of homes, the groups utilized interactive online mapping to visualize the households that were affected around each of the coal ash basins across the state.^[90] This collection and then dissemination of scientific data in a spatially oriented format was one of many steps taken to assist communities’ understanding of the complex scientific data about the coal ash basins. Such an action shows the role of platforms in promoting agency (Image 4).

Image 4:

A snap of drinking water contamination near Duke Energy sites map (by SELC, used with permission).

Following years of additional study into the extent of seepage and groundwater contamination at the sites, in 2019, the state agency proposed classifying Allen’s coal ash lagoons as a low risk and eligible to be capped, with the ash to be left stored beside Lake Wylie. Community groups, opposing this plan, noted that the risk assessments for closing the basins that had been prepared by Duke Energy ignored the potential health and structural risks indicated by its seeping basins.^[91] Beyond their own sampling efforts, community groups relied on experts who critiqued Duke Energy’s environmental reports. Using their technical expertise, these professionals were able to reinforce the observations of civic actors. The circle of concerned citizens engaging in the closure of the ash basins also expanded, as neighborhoods and communities that had learned of the effects of coal ash turned out for public hearings and submitted thousands of written comments.^[92]

The state agency subsequently issued an order that rejected capping in place and required that coal ash basins be fully excavated.^[93] Although Duke Energy appealed this determination, and community groups again intervened in proceedings,^[94] in 2020 a settlement was reached finally cementing a requirement to excavate ash from the remaining basins, including the Allen powerplant. Seven years after the first enforcement case was initiated in court, coal ash at all fourteen of Duke Energy’s powerplants would be removed from leaking basins beside waterways in North Carolina.

The story of the Allen powerplant illustrates how citizens can utilize science to powerfully challenge the narratives and scientific information being proffered by decision-makers, not just in judicial, but also in administrative contexts. Whereas citizen-collected water samples prompted enforcement in the case of the Asheville powerplant that ended in criminal charges and a quick resolution, information gathered at the Allen powerplant contributed to a longer advocacy thread, and ultimately reinforced the need for a durable solution that would halt the ongoing pollution. Throughout, the civic monitoring efforts utilized technologies that were readily available to enhance what they could observe and how they communicated about it. All this shows constructive forms of collective resistance.

A The Case Studies in Light of Our Theoretical Frame

Our analysis of civic monitoring for cleanup of coal ash offers a perspective on crowdsourcing environmental information as a form of resistance, of collective intelligence and of crowd science. The civic groups studied responded to a diffuse and long-lasting environmental distress, to a persistent problem of lack of environmental information that they felt as urgent, and to governmental failures (both at a regulatory and at an enforcement level), rejecting the status of “powerless victims.” The absence of adequate pollution data and perceived lackadaisical response of government authorities to a widespread and languishing problem convinced the people and ENGOs to start crowdsourcing local knowledge, getting public records, working with existing maps and creating new ones,^[101] turning to collecting their own data in order to fill an institutional gap. These actions all show to a different extent an increased agency by ordinary people organized in decentralized but coordinated agents of change. Thus, a critical juncture of our case studies can be identified in “knowledge crowdsourcing” for demanding justice that triggers the government to take action.

Civic monitoring was successfully utilized in responding to the problem of coal ash pollution, as it managed to find a “space” within the various apparatuses in place (legal, governmental, social, and scientific). Furthermore, although technology enhanced people’s ability to gather, collate, and visualize data, the civic efforts were not built around an app and platform. Instead, the technology was shaped around the community that affirmed a rather sensorial, social, and even political “experience of sensing,” as a collective and de-centralized action. Technology was not the foundation of an initiative but rather a way to expand a community’s ability to sense, observe, and communicate. The sensing activities took place within a network of actors that were coordinated by the “right people” to do so. Indeed, the riverkeepers and other organizations, supported by ENGOs with legal expertise, were exactly those actors that had knowledge of the problem and resources and strategies to address it. Therefore, another critical juncture is a “coordinated” crowd yet decentralized enough to capture the full extension of the problem with enough granularity.

B The Coal Ash Series Compared to the Formosa Case

In conclusion, it is useful to compare the discussed cases to a landmark victory for CGE as judicial evidence, a 2019 landmark court decision in Texas finding the petrochemical company Formosa liable for violating the U.S. Clean Water Act based on citizen-collected evidence involving volunteer observations of plastic discharge in the water over years.^[102] While in the Formosa case, citizens fought against a private company, the coal ash cases involved both the energy company responsible for the pollution and the governmental agencies that citizens asserted were failing to responsibly address the pollution. Differently from the Formosa case, which centered around the pollution from one facility in Texas, the coal ash cases were of larger scope and scale, spanning multiple powerplants adjacent to rivers and lakes in different locations, operated by one of the largest utility companies in the United States, and involving input from community groups and individuals across the state. There, achieving a successful outcome across all of the polluted sites followed several years of legal battles and advocacy. Furthermore, the type of evidence at stake is quite different. The Formosa case involved very visible plastic powder and pellets in water; monitoring of coal ash included water quality sampling to detect chemicals associated with coal combustion waste; while seepage itself was often visible, technical lab analyses was needed to characterize the pollutants within it. The cases – despite some differences – also share several similarities. For example, in both cases attribution was possible considering that both the plastic pollution in the Formosa case and the pollutants indicative of coal ash could be clearly attributed to the companies at issue, respectively Formosa Plastics Corporation Texas and Duke Energy.

Both cases resorted to the citizen suit provisions of the Clean Water Act, a federal statute governing water pollution, as the basis for demanding law enforcement against polluters. In both cases the environmental monitoring activities were primarily conducted by riverkeeper organizations, i.e., structured civil society. In the coal ash cases, residents living near facilities were also involved, which is similar to what occurred in the Formosa case but where the powerful character of a local fisherwoman became the symbol of the struggle from the very early stage. In both cases, lawsuits were possible thanks to pro bono representation or legal aid provided in a non-for-profit fashion (in the case of Formosa, the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid and in the coal ash cases, SELC). This shows the potential of free legal aid, with funding coming from grants and donations, or potentially from crowdsourcing financial and human resources. This can be considered another critical juncture enabling the impact of CGE in judicial arena.

As in the Formosa case, in the coal ash cases the government ultimately took responsibility for and oversight of the coal ash problem. State action was triggered by civic monitoring; the state entered the debate with its own monitoring and requirements for the energy company to expand monitoring. The state was better situated to require the energy company to investigate and disclose the full extent of contamination, as they could use existing authorities to require monitoring to thoroughly investigate coal ash facilities without risking trespass, whereas access and information that could be gathered was more limited for local communities. Similar to events of the Formosa case, civic monitoring managed to prompt – and then steer – legislative and regulatory actions (leading to the Coal Ash Management Act in 2014 and engagement in its implementation) and shaped the litigation results (triggering an historical clean-up of coal ash powerplants in the area). Resulting of regulatory interventions and judicial decisions, both cases caught the attention of other potentially impacted companies, having positive spill-over effects in the sector and even driving innovation. Furthermore, aspects of both cases attracted considerable media attention, thus spreading awareness among the public of the wider problems stemming from plastic pellet and coal ash pollution.^[103] Such judicial, regulatory and media attention can be considered other critical junctures of the discussed cases.

C Lessons for Other Concerned Communities

If we were to reflect on possible lessons for communities based in countries in other parts of the world, especially in Europe where one of the authors is based, we need to reflect on parameters that make such considerations applicable in different legal contexts.

Crucial to the uptake of CGE was the availability of legal pathways for the engagement of individuals and ENGOs in governmental decisions and enforcement. These include, in the U.S. context, multiple environmental statutes that allow citizens to take an enforcement role, for example, against polluters in the case of unlawful polluted discharges to air or water, or against federal agencies that fail to perform their duty as required by law.^[104] While much of the discussion focuses on lawsuits and uptake into judicial proceedings promoted under such citizen suit provisions, additional legal apparatuses exist – and were utilized – to incorporate the unique knowledge and observations of ordinary individuals and community groups into public comment processes that would inform regulatory decision-making.

Also of note, the kind of information, or crowd science, that could be aggregated across multiple polluted sites, for consideration in regulatory or judicial proceedings, and which ranged from technical to experiential and individual. From water quality monitoring and analysis for coal ash constituents in areas overlooked by authorities, to the observations of visible polluted seepage escaping coal ash impoundments near landowner properties, to the collection and visualization through web-based mapping of pollution data relevant to residential drinking wells – multiple types of CGE found “space” in legal, governmental, social and scientific settings that were working to understand coal ash pollution.

D Limitations of Our Study

A limitation of this article may be an U.S.-biased perspective as our data comes mainly from there. One of the authors was involved in the coal ash cases, formerly as a lawyer, while the other intensively researched the Formosa case^[105] – including interviewing plaintiffs and legal team – but from the perspective of a European scholar. We started exploring coal ash civic monitoring on the European side and found interesting results especially in Eastern Europe, but so far not comparable in terms of impact and relevance to the cases here illustrated.^[106] Furthermore, this article intentionally highlights instances where community gathered evidence was introduced into judiciary and regulatory proceedings, with success, in that the outcomes aimed to address the pollution that had been identified in collective efforts. The hope is that these examples help to inform a discussion in the types of CGE that might be gathered and the roles such evidence could play where pathways exist, to inform the considerations of where and how to best gain and translate knowledge that community-grounded evidence can provide to decisions, as a form of gaining agency. A limitation is that this discussion does not explore counterexamples, where such evidence was rejected by courts or disregarded by regulators, and whether crowd science plays other roles like framing society’s understanding of environmental problems,^[107] and how that intersects the potential for resisting the decline of the individual through collective action in this context.

We see a potential for a future engagement specifically with coal ash in a series of participatory initiatives focused on air quality associated with solid fuel burning in Kosovo, a country where coal-burning is still prevalent.^[108] Bulgaria’s reliance on coal is one of the cause for the country regularly breaching European pollution limits for air quality.^[109] Also in Hungary the problem exists; this country also has a growing culture of engaging ordinary people in monitoring environmental issues. An ongoing participatory monitoring and intervention campaign was launched, but in a quite institutional manner.^[110] The European Environmental Bureau, which is the largest network of environmental citizens’ organizations in Europe, is also active in providing an alternative to institutional mapping of industrial pollution, including that associated with coal production.^[111] The EEB’s Industrial Plant Data Viewer (IPDV) “allows the public to access and compare data on industrial emissions from large combustion plants across the EU.” This information could eventually trigger agency from below, similar to what witnessed in the U.S. coal ash cases.^[112]

Several questions remain open for future research, such as: are there similar initiatives in Europe – i.e., entailing the monitoring of coal ash by ordinary citizens – which could be comparable to the one described here? More generally, what CGE is already being used across Europe and what is its future potential as evidence in court for grounding environmental law claims? Which legal structures need to be in place to ensure that collective processes of evidence-gathering can have an impact on judicial and regulatory outcomes? We hope that future research will explore these and further avenues also inspired by our study.