Aug 30 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Matthew Bowers The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va.



Karen and Stephen Fox have had a rough year or so, by most measures.

He was diagnosed in March 2009 with larynx cancer and has struggled through treatments. Medical bills stacked up for that and his wife's previously diagnosed lupus. Their three dogs -- a spitz, an Australian shepherd and a 2-year-old Shih Tzu -- died from cancer or kidney ailments.

They couldn't refinance or find a buyer for their home to help pay the bills because, they said, it's involved in the $1 billion neighborhood lawsuits over toxic fly ash used to build a nearby golf course.

So they filed for bankruptcy in May and walked away from their "dream home." They now rent a house in Gloucester.

The Foxes plan to urge Environmental Protection Agency officials to require the public be told when and where fly ash is being dumped or used in projects. Fly or coal ash is the byproduct of burning coal for energy.

One or both will speak for their allotted three minutes today in Arlington at the first of seven planned public hearings around the country.

The hearings concern the first proposed national regulations controlling how energy companies manage fly or coal ash, such as requiring liners between it and the soil.

The proposals are a response to the December 2008 collapse of an earthen dam in eastern Tennessee that let loose a 1 billion-gallon wave of muddy ash onto land and into a river.

There's local interest, too. Dominion Virginia Power provided 1.5 million tons of fly ash to sculpt the 216-acre Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville that opened in 2007. Fly ash contains heavy metals that can endanger health when people are exposed to them through water and air.

W. Lee Daniels, a Virginia Tech environmental professor who has studied fly ash for 20 years, said he hasn't had a chance to closely study the hundreds of pages of proposed regulations.

But he said it was clear to him the EPA prefers ash -- if used -- to be encapsulated, or bound into products such wallboard, concrete and bricks, as opposed to set out in bulk, as for a golf course.

The preamble to the EPA proposal refers to situations where "large quantities" of fly or coal ash "have been used indiscriminately as unencapsulated, general fill. The Agency does not consider this a beneficial use under today's proposal, but rather considers it waste management."

It specifically refers to the Battlefield golf course as a type of use raising "significant environmental concerns."

About 460 Fentress residents living near the golf course are suing Dominion and others over concerns about decreased property values and potential health problems.

A Circuit Court judge in June dismissed all but two core complaints in the lawsuit: whether Dominion created a harmful nuisance, and whether it was negligent in doing so. A trial isn't expected until 2011.

A two-year EPA study concluded in April that contaminants found in water beneath the golf course posed no health risks, and weren't migrating to neighboring residents' wells. Dominion will continue to monitor golf course wells and is helping pay to extend city water lines to area residents.

"Dominion believes that its supplying fly ash to the golf course developer was legal and that it took the proper precautions to ensure that the material was used appropriately," Jim Norvelle, a Dominion spokesman, said in an e-mail after the June court hearing.

Many of the more than 150 registered speakers in Arlington represent industry or environmental groups.

For the Foxes, though, it's personal.

They said that if they had known what was going into the ground nearby, they wouldn't have bought the Murray Drive home in 2002, a year after the City Council approved the golf course in June 2001.

After Stephen's doctor advised him to move to aid his recovery, the couple couldn't get rid of their house.

"We were told no Realtor would list our house," said Stephen Fox, 49, an electrician.

"No one would touch it because of the fact it was a liability, until it (the lawsuit) was resolved," added Karen Fox, 43, a homemaker.

Speaking from their lawyers' Virginia Beach office, they said that any money they win in a lawsuit would go to the bankruptcy. They lost equity, plus some $200,000 paid into the home. But they feel like the "lucky ones," they insisted.

"We just wanted out," Stephen Fox said. The smell of their water sickened him. Karen Fox said everyday things, such as filling a pot for spaghetti, created stress.

Now that stress is gone, they said. So i s Stephen's cancer, so far.

They weren't able to keep a promise to use money from the house for their son's college costs, but he earned scholarships to cover most of them as he begins his studies at Hampden-Sydney College this fall.

"They need to disclose this, what's being dumped in these back yards, and what they're selling next to," Stephen Fox said. "We don't want to see everyone else go through what we went through."

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-5221, matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com

Monday's hearing is at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City in Arlington. Information about registering and about the other hearings is available at www.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/industrial/special/fossil/ccr-rule/ccr-hearing.htm

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