A new study has found that heavy metal contamination of the Mobile River, near Alabama Power’s Plant Barry, rivals the levels seen after the 2008 coal ash spill in Tennessee, one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

“I think if you have something like that in your backyard, wouldn’t you be worried?” said Natasha Dimova, a researcher at the University of Alabama and one of the authors of the study. “Even if it sits there and doesn’t leak anything, if the next storm comes and hits the pond, we are in a very bad situation, probably.”

The study , published in the journal “Science of the Total Environment,” found arsenic and cadmium in both water and suspended sediment samples taken from near the south end of the Barry Electric Generating Plant coal ash pond, which lies adj

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