The Clean Water Act has been “almost universally ignored by power companies and permitting agencies,” says a coalition of environmental groups who released a report Tuesday revealing a long list of toxic poisons that are routinely discharged into rivers, lakes and bays across the country.

The report, conducted by Waterkeeper Alliance, Sierra Club, Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and Clean Water Action, studied 386 coal-fired power plants and their local permits and found that substances such as arsenic, boron, cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium are almost continually released into public waterways.

“We look out for lead paint when we buy a home and we clear our kids from the room when a mercury thermometer breaks on the ground—so why would we let the coal industry dump millions of pounds of these poisons into our water?” —Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Club

According to the groups, “existing standards” that apply to coal plant wastewater were last established in 1982 and have not kept up pace with contemporary coal plant practices, which emit vast amounts of toxic substances in their coal ash and scrubber wastewater discharges that are eventually “dumped” into the environment.

“We look out for lead paint when we buy a home and we clear our kids from the room when a mercury thermometer breaks on the ground—so why would we let the coal industry dump millions of pounds of these poisons into our water?” said Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

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The report, Closing the Floodgates: How the Coal Industry Is Poisoning Our Water and How We Can Stop It, finds that:

• In the absence of any effective pollution limit, coal plants have become by far the largest source of toxic water pollution in the country
• Of the 274 coal plants that discharge coal ash and scrubber wastewater into waterways, nearly 70 percent (188) have no limits on the toxics most commonly found in these discharges (arsenic, boron, cadmium, lead, mercury and selenium) that are dumped directly into rivers, lakes, streams and bays.
• Of these 274 coal plants, more than one-third (102) have no requirements to monitor or report discharges of these toxic metals to government agencies or the public.
• A total of 71 coal plants surveyed discharge toxic water pollution into rivers, lakes, streams and bays that have already been declared impaired due to poor water quality.Of these plants that are dumping toxic metals into impaired waterways, more than three out of four coal plants (59) have no permit that limits the amount of toxic metals it can dump.
• Nearly half of the coal plants surveyed (187) are operating with an expired Clean Water Act permit. Fifty-three of these power plants are operating with permits that expired five or more years ago