Iowa State University gets its coal from two mines: the Prairie Eagle Mine in southern Illinois and the Dodge Hill Mining Company in Kentucky.

At these mines, huge tractors excavate large swaths of land to get at small seams of coal in the earth’s crust. Once the coal is ripped out of the ground, it is loaded onto semis. It is then trucked and trained to barges on the Mississippi River. An average barge burns between 2,000 and 2,400 gallons of diesel fuel per day.

The barges then unload in Muscatine, Iowa, and the coal is trucked to Ames. Once the coal arrives in Ames, it enters a boiler and is burned to create steam and electricity. This process releases sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, carbon, particulate matter and other pollutants that contaminate our air, land and water. After all of this is done, the leftover concentrated toxic ash is trucked to Waterloo, where it is then dumped into an unlined quarry.

Some argue that this is the most efficient and sustainable way to power the university. However, their projections don’t usually take into account the complete cost of coal. Considering coal’s health and environmental impacts, it’s extremely dangerous and costly. The university is passing off these costs to future generations of students — through rising health care costs and climate change adaptation — rather than dealing with them in a responsible and proactive manner.

Furthermore, the current cost of coal is not stable. As the Environmental Protection Agency begins to regulate new air toxins and mandate control technology, millions of dollars will have to be spent in the short term to guarantee our energy needs.

Luckily, renewable and alternative energy are falling in cost and are now extremely viable options. This, combined with energy conservation and efficiency, could be the beginning of a truly sustainable future. What we need now is a proactive administration that stands with the students. Let’s hope that this process can be inclusive, transparent and imminent.