Read the report

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Dozens of largely unregulated coal-ash impoundments across the country take in more toxic power plant waste than the one that broke two weeks ago in Tennessee, according to a report issued Wednesday by a coalition of environmental organizations.

West Virginia is among 13 states that have at least three coal-fired power plant dumps that rival the toxic waste received by the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Plant impoundment, according to the report.

Officials from the Environmental Integrity Project and other groups said the impoundments pose the threat not only of catastrophic failure, but also of a "slow poisoning" of groundwater supplies with heavy metals and other toxics.

"The Tennessee eco-disaster has cast a spotlight on what is a very serious national problem - the existence of under-regulated toxic pollution, coal dump sites near coal-fired power plants that pose a serious threat to drinking water supplies, rivers and streams," said Eric Schaeffer, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who directs the Environmental Integrity Project.

Schaeffer and several other groups, including Earthjustice, released their coal-ash report on the eve of a Senate committee hearing this morning on the Dec. 22 collapse of a dam that sent more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash pouring onto nearby homes, farms and rivers.

On Monday, utility industry spokesman Frank Maisano, in an e-mail message to news media, criticized environmental groups for using the dam collapse to attack "clean coal" rather than addressing "the issue of the pond, cleaning it up and whether there is actually any danger to the local community.

"In fact, after nearly 20 years of study of coal ash, EPA concluded in 2000 that it does not warrant hazardous waste regulation and that the states should be the primary regulators for coal ash management," Maisano said.

Then on Tuesday, the Sierra Club and a coalition of Tennessee residents filed a formal notice of intent to sue TVA for alleged violations of federal waste management, water pollution and emergency spill notification laws related to the dam collapse.

Among other things, that legal notice noted that elevated levels of arsenic and lead have been found in piles of coal ash that were released from the TVA impoundment. Also, the notice said, independent tests have found water quality violations for arsenic, barium, lead, mercury and other toxic materials in water downstream from the dam collapse. In a required notice to emergency responders and regulators, TVA has provided only a "guesstimate" of the hazardous substances contained in the ash, and no concrete information on the amounts of those substances released.

Read the report

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Dozens of largely unregulated coal-ash impoundments across the country take in more toxic power plant waste than the one that broke two weeks ago in Tennessee, according to a report issued Wednesday by a coalition of environmental organizations.

West Virginia is among 13 states that have at least three coal-fired power plant dumps that rival the toxic waste received by the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Plant impoundment, according to the report.

Officials from the Environmental Integrity Project and other groups said the impoundments pose the threat not only of catastrophic failure, but also of a "slow poisoning" of groundwater supplies with heavy metals and other toxics.

"The Tennessee eco-disaster has cast a spotlight on what is a very serious national problem - the existence of under-regulated toxic pollution, coal dump sites near coal-fired power plants that pose a serious threat to drinking water supplies, rivers and streams," said Eric Schaeffer, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official who directs the Environmental Integrity Project.

Schaeffer and several other groups, including Earthjustice, released their coal-ash report on the eve of a Senate committee hearing this morning on the Dec. 22 collapse of a dam that sent more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash pouring onto nearby homes, farms and rivers.

On Monday, utility industry spokesman Frank Maisano, in an e-mail message to news media, criticized environmental groups for using the dam collapse to attack "clean coal" rather than addressing "the issue of the pond, cleaning it up and whether there is actually any danger to the local community.

"In fact, after nearly 20 years of study of coal ash, EPA concluded in 2000 that it does not warrant hazardous waste regulation and that the states should be the primary regulators for coal ash management," Maisano said.

Then on Tuesday, the Sierra Club and a coalition of Tennessee residents filed a formal notice of intent to sue TVA for alleged violations of federal waste management, water pollution and emergency spill notification laws related to the dam collapse.

Among other things, that legal notice noted that elevated levels of arsenic and lead have been found in piles of coal ash that were released from the TVA impoundment. Also, the notice said, independent tests have found water quality violations for arsenic, barium, lead, mercury and other toxic materials in water downstream from the dam collapse. In a required notice to emergency responders and regulators, TVA has provided only a "guesstimate" of the hazardous substances contained in the ash, and no concrete information on the amounts of those substances released.

Because coal-ash impoundments are not regulated as strictly as hazardous waste dumps or coal-slurry impoundments, pinpointing the number and location of them nationwide is not an easy exercise. A decade-old EPA report said there were 600 such facilities, but that figure also included dry-disposal landfills.

Electric utilities are the nation's largest generators of toxic waste, and about half of the 120 million pounds of waste ash produced by coal-fired plants goes to wet impoundments or dry landfills, according to EPA documents.

Schaeffer's group used EPA Toxics Release Inventory data to measure the toxic wastes sent by power plants across the country to surface impoundments.

In its report, the group ranked power plants based on the amount of six toxic pollutants - arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium and thallium - they send to impoundments.

Between 2000 and 2006, the report found, the power industry disposed of more than 124 million pounds of those materials in surface impoundments. That figure represents the amount of toxic pollutants, and not the total amount of waste ash that was dumped.

In West Virginia, impoundments that ranked among the top 50 nationwide for any of the six pollutants studied were American Electric Power's Kammer/Mitchell site in Marshall County, the John Amos facility in Putnam County, Allegheny Power's Pleasants/Willow Island site in Pleasants County, and AEP's Sporn facility in Mason County.

Jeffrey Stant, director of the Environmental Integrity Project's Coal Combustion Waste Initiative, said many utilities use impoundments because it allows them to combine a variety of power plant ash and other waste and dispose of them at one facility. Water is added because it allows the waste to be pumped to the disposal lagoons, which is cheaper than trucking the material, Stant said.

EPA has found that most wet impoundments are unlined, making it much more likely that toxic materials will leach out into groundwater supplies.

"An indus try free from regulation has run amok," said Lisa Evans, an Earthjustice lawyer who has been following the coal-ash issue for years.

House Natural Resources Chairman Nick J. Rahall, D-W.Va., has said that coal-ash impoundments should be subject to the samm be the first logical step," said Chris Irwin, an attorney with United Mountain Defense in Knoxville, Tenn.

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kw...@wvgazette.com or at 304-348-1702.