Nov 9 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Tom Meersman Star Tribune, Minneapolis

Burning 60 rail carloads of coal every day creates a lot of ash, no matter how good the equipment. That's the challenge facing Xcel Energy's Darrell Knutson, who stood on the edge of a huge landfill Wednesday that receives truckloads of ash every day from the Allen S. King power plant in Oak Park Heights, about a mile away.

With that landfill almost full, Knutson is managing Xcel's effort to build a new dump. But that effort has caused concern up and down the St. Croix River Valley.

Although the current landfill hasn't been the subject of much complaint, community leaders contend that the new one -- intended for ash produced during the next 30 years -- will lower property values and contaminate groundwater.

"The St. Croix Valley has been recognized as a pristine natural environment, and we'd like to keep it that way," said Dan Kyllo, board member of West Lakeland Township, where the new 46-acre disposal site would fill part of an active gravel mine.

Knutson said Xcel will use the best technology to ensure that the new landfill will be safe, with liners and leak detectors to capture any contamination.

"We don't know of any better design," he said, "and we're very confident that this is a secure location."

The reason Xcel needs a new ash disposal dump is related to environmental improvements at the coal-burning plant. The 38-year-old plant is getting a $400 million overhaul to extend its life another 30 years, reduce air pollutants and increase power production.

But the tradeoff for gaining better air quality will be additional ash, since more "fly ash" in the plant's gases will be captured.

The current landfill, used since 1972, will be full by 2010. On Wednesday, Knutson held a bottle full of the fly ash, which looked like finely ground cinnamon with a grayish tint. Workers wet it down before it is trucked to the landfill, he said. Once there, it is dumped, spread and compacted into layers that solidify.

Opponents of the new landfill have suggested that it be located far away from the St. Croix River, preferably well outside the seven-county metro area.

But Xcel officials say they need a disposal site within 30 minutes' drive from the plant, because after that the wet ash will solidify like concrete in the trucks. Shipping the ash a longer distance in dry form would be possible, they said, but only in sealed vehicles that would be more costly to load, fuel and drive.

Knutson said the proposed landfill would be located in one corner of the Tiller Corp. gravel mine just north of Interstate. It's an ideal site, he said, because it has already been partly excavated, receives considerable truck traffic and is separated from surrounding land by earthen berms. Xcel would "wet haul" about 17 truckloads of ash a day to the site, he said, six days per week.

Pollution rules

State pollution control officials said fly ash contains heavy metals, such as selenium, boron, vanadium and molybdenum. It is regulated as an industrial waste. At high concentrations in drinking water, those metals can be a potential health concern, said Mike Lynn, a senior engineer at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

If the ash landfill is built, Lynn said, Xcel would need to install monitoring wells as an "early warning system" in case of a leak. The agency reviews those monitoring records quarterly for companies that operate coal ash landfills, he said.

The MPCA Citizens Board is also expected to decide in December whether Xcel may proceed to conduct a thorough environmental impact study for the project during 2007. The company's preliminary environmental assessment drew 56 letters, most of them criticizing the project.

Afton Mayor Dave Engstrom wrote that all residences and businesses in the city rely on groundwater for their drinking, and that "any contamination of the aquifer would result in hundreds of homeowners without a safe water supply."

The Middle St. Croix Watershed Management Organization, representing 10 communities along the river, also expressed serious concerns. "There's already multiple ground water contamination issues in the area, and this would just be another potential problem," organization administrator Melissa Lewis said in an interview.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, while not objecting to the proposal, noted in a letter that the environmental study needs to look closely at the geological structure of the gravel mine site, since the general vicinity has areas of fractured limestone and sinkholes that could allow landfill leaks to move quickly into groundwater.

Knutson, Xcel's project manager, hopes the project can receive permits for construction to begin in 2008.

He said the landfill would have plenty of safeguards and backup systems -- clay and vinyl liners and monitoring wells and leak collection systems -- to protect people and their property. The company is already working with the city of Oak Park Heights on uses for the current landfill site after it closes in a few years, he said, including proposals for a pavilion, bandshell and observation tower.

Tom Meersman -- 612 673-7388 -- meersman@startribune.com