Coal waste found to be a 'ticking time bomb' across Australia

Environmental Justice Australia report finds problems at ash dumps in every mainland state

Soon after Sue Wynn moved up the road from the Vales Point coal power station, on the banks of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales's Hunter Valley, she started to worry about what the plant was releasing into the environment.

Not the carbon dioxide emissions from its smokestacks - it was 1978, and that disquiet came later - but the coal ash mixed with water and piped into a giant unlined dam site nearby.