Contamination from coal ash waste is worse than
EPA says A Report
By Mark Clayton Mark Clayton – Wed Feb 24, 7:10 pm ET
Coal ash waste contamination nationwide is far worse than indicated by a
new Environmental Protection Agency tally, with dozens more ash-waste
ponds and landfills also leaching toxins into streams and drinking
water, a new study finds.
At least 31 “new damage cases” not listed by the EPA in its
end-of-the-year tally of 70 coal-ash pollution sites are identified and
their pollution profiled in a report released Wednesday by the
Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice groups.
The groups identified the sites by assembling contamination data from
state files using “similar criteria” to those sites the EPA had already
identified, the report says. Arsenic, selenium, and boron were among the
dangerous chemicals found to have “migrated off” nearly half of the 31
sites where coal-fired power plants store their coal ash.
Some drinking water contaminatedContaminated water from coal-ash
chemicals was found to be washing into streams and leaching into
groundwater, including drinking water supplies. The sources were found
to include many “dry landfill” and “structural fill” (areas where coal
ash is seen as beneficial) ash impoundments, not just the wet
retention-pond-type fills used by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s
Kingston plant, which spilled an estimated 1 billion gallons of sludge
across 300 acres of rural Tennessee just over a year ago.
Every year, the roughly 400 coal-fired power plants in the US produce
about 140 million tons of scrubber sludge, fly ash, and other wastes. A
fraction of that waste can be used in products like concrete. The rest
goes into landfills and retention ponds.
The 31 identified sites are spread across 14 states, including Delaware
(1), Florida (3), Illinois (1), Indiana (2), Maryland (1), Michigan (1),
Montana (1), Nevada (1), New Mexico (1), North Carolina (6),
Pennsylvania (6), South Carolina (3), Tennessee (2), and West Virginia
(2). But even the higher total of 101 major coal-ash sites leaking
toxins may only hint at a larger problem, some say.
'There are hundreds of leaking sites'“While the catastrophic spill at
TVA’s Kingston plant has become the poster child for the damage that
coal ash can wreak, there are hundreds of leaking sites throughout the
United States where the damage is deadly, but far less conspicuous,â€
Mr. Stant and other report authors said in a teleconference that federal
policy, which puts states in change of determining how to regulate coal
ash, has “failedâ€
The groups called also called on the White House Office of Management
and Budget (OMB) to “stop sitting” on its review of a coal-ash
contamination rule and allow the EPA to begin addressing the problem.
But many business groups and members of Congress say federal regulation
is a bad idea that would harm the economy and businesses that use coal
ash. In a letter this month to Peter Orszag, director of the OMB, Rep.
Jerry Costello (D) of Illinois and seven other lawmakers called on him
to “consider the impact the regulation of CCBs [coal combustion
byproducts] will have on jobs and the economy in Illinois.”
“A lot of people are claiming that if coal ash is not regulated as a
hazardous waste at the federal level, then it’s not regulated,” Jim
Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group
told the Monitor after the Kingston spill last year. “States do have
programs, and they aren’t static and have become more stringent over
time.”
The EPA has yet to respond to questions posed by the Monitor.
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