Environmentalists want EPA to regulate coal waste

As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hears testimony on Thursday about the massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in December, advocacy groups are calling for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the disposal of coal ash produced by electric power plants.

On Dec. 22, 2008, a dike broke at a 40-acre waste-retention pond near the Kingston, Tenn., facility, sending more than 1 billion gallons of toxic fly ash sludge into nearby homes and waterways and covering nearly 300 acres. It was the largest such spill in the United States.

Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, said there are nearly 100 similar surface impoundment ponds at power plants nationwide. An analysis of industry-reported data collected by EPA shows that many of those "wet dumps" are larger, older and contain significantly higher levels of toxic metals than the one in Kingston, Schaeffer said.

"We don't mean to diminish the Kingston spill at all," Schaeffer said, but the data suggest it might be only a warning of greater problems to come, he said during a Tuesday teleconference with reporters and representatives of other environmental groups.

"Many other communities are also at risk, whether from sudden spills or the slow leaching of toxic pollutants from coal ash into the surrounding environment," he said.

Surface impoundment ponds for the waste generated by coal-fired power plants are largely unregulated. Lisa Evans, an attorney with the nonprofit public interest law firm EarthJustice, said federal regulation was imperative to prevent future breaches. "Nothing less will solve this serious problem and stop the ongoing damage to our health and environment," she said.

In 2000, under the Clinton administration, EPA determined that coal combustion waste should be managed as "contingent hazardous waste," but the agency reversed course that same year in a final regulatory decision after what Evans characterized as pressure from the electric power industry. A commitment by the agency to develop regulations for surface impoundment ponds was shelved after the Bush administration took office in 2001, she said.

"We can only hope that the latest disaster" convinces the incoming Obama administration to act on the issue, she said. Some states, such as Alabama, don't regulate coal waste at all, and many states allow electric utilities to store the waste in unlined ponds, she said.

The Environmental Integrity Project tracked the levels of arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium and thallium reported by industry at facilities with waste storage sites similar to the one in Tennessee. The group's findings showed many sites had far higher concentrations of those metals than the Kingston site.