Toxic coal ash piling up in ponds in Utah

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jan 10, 2009 | by Dina Cappiello Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Millions of tons of toxic coal ash are piling up in power-plant ponds in Utah and 31 other states, a situation the government has long recognized as a risk to human health and the environment but has done nothing about.

An Associated Press analysis of the most recent Energy Department data found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in surface ponds similar to one that ruptured last month in Tennessee. On Friday, a pond at a northeastern Alabama power plant spilled a different material.

Energy Department records indicate that Utah has two power plants with coal-ash ponds. The city of Los Angeles owns a power plant in Millard County that stores 96,700 tons of coal ash. And Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. has a coal-ash pond in Salt Lake County that stores 34,300 tons of the waste.

The states storing the most coal ash in ponds are Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.

The man-made lagoons hold a mixture of the noncombustible ingredients of coal and the ash trapped by equipment designed to reduce air pollution from the power plants.

Over the years, the volume of waste has grown as demand for electricity increased and the federal government clamped down on emissions from power plants.

The AP's analysis found that in 2005, the most recent year data is available, 721 power plants generating at least 100 megawatts of electricity produced 95.8 million tons of coal ash. About 20 percent -- or nearly 20 million tons -- ended up in surface ponds. The remainder ends up in landfills, or is sold for use in concrete, among other uses.

The Environmental Protection Agency eight years ago said it wanted to set a national standard for ponds or landfills used to dispose of wastes produced from burning coal.

The agency has yet to act.

As a result, coal ash ponds are subject to less regulation than landfills accepting household trash, even though the industry's own estimates show that ash ponds contain tens of thousands of pounds of toxic heavy metals. The EPA estimates that about 300 ponds for coal ash exist nationwide.

Without federal guidelines, regulations of the ash ponds vary by state. Most lack liners and have no monitors to ensure that ash and its contents don't seep into underground aquifers.

"There has been zero done by the EPA," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D- W. Va., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Rahall pushed through legislation in 1980 directing the EPA to study how wastes generated at the nation's coal-fired power plants should be treated under federal law.

In both 1988 and 1993, the EPA decided that coal ash should not be regulated as a hazardous waste. The agency has also failed to take other steps to control how the waste is stored.

"Coal ash impoundments like the one in Tennessee have to be subject to federal regulations to ensure a basic level of safety for communities," Rahall said.

The Tennessee spill was at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant covered 300 acres in a slurry of coal ash and water, destroying homes and tainting waterways and soil with high levels of arsenic.

The utility reported a second leak Friday at a pond at a northeast Alabama power plant that was storing gypsum, a material trapped in air pollution control devices that is different from the sludge that spilled in Tennessee. Some of the gypsum reached a nearby creek before the leak was stopped.

The spills have renewed a 20-year-old debate about whether stricter regulations are needed to govern them.

Rahall and Democrats in the Senate are also calling for tighter controls, including a requirement for ash ponds to be lined.

"The federal government has the power to regulate these wastes, and inaction has allowed this enormous volume of toxic material to go largely unregulated," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs Senate committee that oversees the EPA.

In March 2000, the agency highlighted the risks posed by wastes in landfills and ponds. In an early draft of its proposal for a national standard, the EPA concluded that the wastes "have the potential to present danger to human health and the environment."

It also warned that the number of cases of contamination nationwide was likely to be underestimated because of poor state records and the lack of groundwater monitoring.

At the time, the agency said storage ponds posed an even greater risk than landfills when it came to leaks and spills. The pressure exerted by water "increases the likelihood of releases," the EPA concluded.

In 2006, the EPA once again found that disposal of coal waste in ponds elevates cancer risk when metals leach into drinking water sources.

The agency, which had set 2006 as a target for issuing a proposed regulation, says it is still working toward a national standard. A top EPA official also said there has been no "conscious or clear slowdown" by Bush administration officials who have run the agency since 2001 and often sided with the energy industry on environmental controls.

"It has been an issue of resources and a range of pressing things we are working on," said Matthew Hale, who heads the agency's Office of Solid Waste.