The cost that comes later

Illinois wants to protect the Great Lakes from invasive carp. A toxic mess stands in the way.

The state still needs to acquire some additional land along the river bank to be able to build the barricade. It’s got its eye on a piece of land nearby where a coal fired power plant once stood, but there’s a problem: The ground is contaminated by coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity that is known to cause cancer.

Power — energy — has always been relatively cheap in the U.S. because the true cost of producing it — cleaning up the land, water, and air polution it creates, for starters — isn't included in the price of the product. The government, which is to say taxpayers, get stuck with it in the end. 

And in this case it's not just the cost of cleaning up contaminated land, it's also the cost of further environmental damage if it's not cleaned up.