It's easier but an extra step I try to avoid. Coal ash was a byproduct of paper mill operations, produced from the burning of coal. It's not an ash like a cigarette ash, but more like a burned rock. When the Great Northern Paper Mill (once the largest in the world) was built here, there were only two farms and no other homes in the area. Since much of the land was either underwater or marshy, coal ash was used to fill in the low spots; thus, many of the homes in Millinocket sit on a bed of coal ash. According to various reports, the land that my house is on was either a pond or a swamp before it was filled in.