Randolph landfill could get coal ash

Aug 31 - News & Record (Greensboro, NC)

 

Environmentalists warn that a planned regional landfill in Randolph County could become a burial ground for worrisome amounts of coal ash.

A contract the county signed with trash-disposal giant Waste Management specifically allows the new landfill to accept waste from "electric power generation." Those are code words for coal ash, said Therese Vick of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League .

That could threaten human health, air quality, groundwater in the landfill's immediate vicinity and other nearby water sources, including the Deep River , which borders part of the 667-acre tract, according to Vick and her colleagues at the nonprofit, regional watchdog group.

"Waste Management is banking on the disposal of coal ash. Randolph County is putting itself at risk to be a dump for the (power) industry's coal ash problems," Vick said. "Coal ash does not belong in a municipal solid waste landfill."

She said it's a foregone conclusion that at some time in the future this planned landfill will cause environmental problems by leaking the liquid residue of what will have been buried there over the years.

Landfill advocates disagree, saying the landfill will be a state-of-the-art facility with underground liners that trap any such discharges and a sophisticated leak-detection system.

County officials signed a 30-year agreement with Waste Management to build and operate this landfill on county-owned property southeast of Randleman . Waste Management hopes to open it in 2016, company spokesman Randall Essick said.

Coal ash became a concern for many North Carolina residents after this winter's spill from an ash-storage pond at the retired Dan River Steam Station near Eden , the third largest such release in U.S. history.

Coal ash is what remains of coal burned to make electricity. It contains heavy metals and other substances that are not the most lethal pollutants, but they can threaten human health and the environment in the massive amounts of ash that Duke Energy and other utilities have stored up over the years.

Besides the Dan River spill, Duke Energy this year has had issues with seepage at unlined dumps in New Hanover County and a crack in an earthen dam holding back coal ash near the Cape Fear River . The utility stores coal ash waste at 33 sites in the state.

Waste Management's Essick said that coal ash was not a major consideration in his company's Randolph County plans.

"It is acceptable to go into a lined landfill," Essick said, but added that the company had not thought of it.

"To say that was what we had thought about, you couldn't say that," he said.

"We don't have any intentions of doing it now," he added, referring to coal ash disposal at the planned landfill. "But like I say, that is a recommended method of disposal for the coal ash."

Meanwhile, at the company's headquarters in Houston, Texas , top Waste Management executives have identified coal ash as a "big growth" item for their company.

David Steiner , the company's chief executive officer, recently used that term in speaking with reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek about a pending change in federal coal ash regulations likely to make coal-fired power plants bury their ash waste only in engineered landfills.

"The utilities see the regulations coming, so we are already starting to get a lot of coal ash," the magazine quoted Steiner as saying.

Harold Holmes , the chairman of the Randolph County Board of Commissioners , initially said on Friday that he understood coal ash would not be acceptable in the landfill designed primarily for "household waste." But he acknowledged after speaking with Essick that it might play a minor role in the waste company's operations at the new landfill, if the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources approved ash for burial there.

"He said that the coal ash was not on their radar when they talked about the landfill," Holmes said. "It's certainly not going to fill up our landfill with coal ash. ... As a municipal solid waste landfill for household trash, that's the main thing that will be in there."

Randolph produces about 400 tons of waste a day, and the landfill needs about 2,000 tons a day to operate efficiently and economically, reports to Randolph officials estimated last year before plans were finalized.

One report indicated the additional municipal trash would come from other cities and counties in North Carolina , as well as from parts of Virginia and South Carolina within a driving distance of 100 miles.

That document, the project's "Facility Plan Report" from September 2013 also seemed to outlaw coal ash at the planned landfill.

"Hazardous, infectious, regulated medical waste, and industrial wastes will be prohibited from disposal, including coal combustion by-products," consultant Golder Associates of Greensboro said in the report several months before Randolph officials selected Waste Management to operate the planned landfill.

The various forms of coal ash, from boiler slag to fly ash, are often defined as "coal combustion by-products."

It's too early to say with certainty whether coal ash might make it's way into the new landfill, said Ed Mussler , who supervises the permitting process for the N.C. Division of Waste Management's solid waste section.

"They don't even have their permit yet," said Mussler, whose division is a subsection of the DENR.

The state agency held an environmental impact hearing on the landfill in Asheboro last week, one of the steps leading to permit approval. The topic of coal ash didn't come up during the meeting Wednesday evening.

But Mussler said that under North Carolina's pending rewrite of state law governing coal ash, a lined landfill such as the one planned in Randolph would qualify to bury coal ash.

The proposed new law defines coal ash as a "solid waste" suitable for disposal in any landfill meeting requirements for household or industrial waste, he said.

"We're not that far along in the process where it would come up," Mussler said of the topic of putting coal ash in the planned landfill. "But could they under the right circumstances? Yes, they could."

He added that the type of landfill Randolph County and Waste Management are planning also "matches the direction that's given in the (proposed) statute for handling of the ash that might be excavated from the ponds" where Duke Energy has stored coal ash for years.

The utility's 33 coal ash ponds statewide -- and particularly the Dan River mishap in February -- spurred reform legislation that the General Assembly approved recently after months of tinkering and debate. The utility's storage lagoons contain more than 100 million tons of submerged ash, at least some of which would end up in landfills under the new legislation.

Gov. Pat McCrory said recently he leans toward signing the legislation into law, but he has not done that yet. He can either put his name to it, veto it or simply allow it to become law by doing nothing.

Another pending law change is at the federal level, where a decision by regulators could determine whether coal ash ever finds a resting place in the new Randolph landfill.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to regulate coal ash as a hazardous waste or as nonhazardous solid waste, a decision it expects to make later this year.

If EPA picks the hazardous category, coal ash would require special handling beyond the scope of a municipal landfill like the one Randolph plans. But many experts believe that's unlikely because they don't think the health threat from coal ash is severe enough to warrant that designation and because it would greatly complicate the future for some forms of coal ash that can be safely recycled in construction materials and other products.

Steiner, Waste Management CEO, told the Bloomberg publication recently that the EPA decision should mean big business for his company. Utilities have traditionally handled coal ash on their own, often without the safeguards of a commercial landfill.

Winning just "a fraction" of that new coal ash market could produce 10 million tons of added sales volume per year for Waste Management, which now handles an annual total of about 100 million tons of garbage nationwide, Steiner told Bloomberg Businessweek .

Activists at the Blue Ridge Environmental League saw that report and instantly thought of the Randolph County project and contract wording that they fear opens the door to just that kind of waste.

Now they're trying to get the word out, Vick said.

"Unfortunately," she said, "county officials don't always look too far ahead."

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