Coal Ash

KDKA photo of existing
Little Blue Run coal-ash pond.

Communities in the Pittsburgh area are suffering from the effects of toxic coal ash generated from the numerous coal-fired power plants that circle Pittsburgh in the ‘Ring of Fire’. Usually the ash is stored in ponds, and the dams of those ponds can fail as in Tennessee. The good news is that EPA is proposing a new rule that would create enforceable federal safeguards, and help to protect us from this hazardous pollution.

Tell the EPA to hold a hearing on the proposed rules in Pittsburgh so that   the communities in SW Pennsylvania that are affected by toxic coal ash have a chance to be heard.

Please write to: Mr. Alexander Livnat, US EPA Headquarters, Ariel Rios Bldg., 1200 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Mail Code 5304P, Washington DC 20460.

Coal ash is the residue that remains after coal is burned. It contains arsenic, boron, cadmium, lead, mercury, sulfur and other heavy metals, many of which can leach into our water cause cancer. As dangerous and dirty as coal ash is, it is not classified as hazardous waste. Thus, at present the federal regulations treat it no more strictly than household garbage.

KDKA photo of existing
Little Blue Run coal-ash pond.

The owners of the Bruce Mansfield power plant in Beaver County continue to plan for a new 1,300 acre coal-ash dump in Greene Township. This was clear at a crowded April 5 public meeting where First Energy officials attempted to counter the fears of local residents.

The company claims that the current Little Blue Run coal-ash pond, which is rated as having High Hazard Potential by the federal EPA, will be filled by 2018. On March 1 Greene Township supervisors denied First Energy’s re-zoning request for a second coal-ash pond. (more…)

The spill of over a billion pounds of coal ash sludge from the TVA’s Kingston Power Plant in Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008 focused the nation’s attention on the storage and treatment of coal ash waste from coal-burning power plants. The United States generates 130 million tons of coal ash each year, and this ash is stored in more than 550 impoundments across the country. Pollutants in coal ash lead to cancer, organ failure and nervous system damage. Since the TVA incident, the EPA has rated 49 of the impoundments as High Hazard Potential sites and 60 as Significant Hazard.
(more…)

The ash collected from power plant smokestacks is at present categorized by the federal EPA as “special waste” and is exempt from non-hazardous waste regulations. In the wake of the Tennessee coal ash pond disaster, EPA is taking a second look at the disposal of coal ash.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania DEP is considering rulemaking for the ‘Beneficial Use of Coal Ash’. To that end, the DEP will hold two public hearings in our area.

1 p.m., Monday, December 7, 2009
DEP Southwest Regional Office
400 Waterfront Drive Conference
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

1 p.m., Tuesday, December 8, 2009
DEP Cambria District Office
286 Industrial Park Road
Ebensburg, PA 15931

For Background and Talking Points, see below. (more…)

The Beech Hollow waste coal plant proposed in nearby Robinson Twp. was the subject of an Aug. 27 public meeting organized by the Mt. Lebanon Environmental Community Action Team. Over fifty local residents heard about the problems associated with this proposed plant and what can be done to stop it.

Audience at Beech Hollow meeting, Aug. 27.
Photo courtesy of R. Francisco.

The Beech Hollow plant would emit 1,701,314 tons of global warming pollution every year, along with harmful levels of soot and smog pollution which can worsen asthma and cause other respiratory illnesses. In addition to health concerns, the Beech Hollow plant would prevent the development of clean renewable energy, like solar and wind, in Pennsylvania that could secure our energy future. (more…)

photo from the FirstEnergy plant fact sheet

The borough of Shippingport, in Beaver County down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, was the site of the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant. It was decommissioned in 1982. But the Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant is still standing in Shippingport, producing 2,640 MW of electricity by burning seven million tons of coal annually.

After all that coal has been burned, the ash has to go somewhere. That somewhere is the impoundment created by damming the Little Blue Run in nearby Greene Township. According to a spokesman for the power company, EnergyFirst, “The dam contains 9 million cubic yards of fill material. It is 400 feet high, 1,300 feet thick at the base and 2,200 feet across at the crest of the dam”.

The federal EPA has now placed the Little Blue Run impoundment on a list of 44 “high hazard potential” impoundments containing “coal combustion residuals”– it is the only Pennsylvania entry.

“The presence of liquid coal ash impoundments near our homes, schools and business could pose a serious risk to life and property in the event of an impoundment rupture,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “By compiling a list of these facilities, EPA will be better able to identify and reduce potential risks by working with states and local emergency responders.”

The Bruce Mansfield plant has a history of accidents and legal battles. This recent move by the EPA may encourage a new wave of local action.

It was a good move when air pollutant scrubbers were installed at the Hatfield’s Ferry power plant in Greene County.  It was not a good move when the owner Allegheny Power applied to the state DEP for a water discharge permit to dump the pollutants from the smokestacks into the Monongahela River.

This issue of dealing with power plant waste was the subject of an April 30 Congressional hearing. At that hearing Dr. Conrad Volz of Univ. of Pittsburgh reviewed the chemistry of Coal Combustion Waste (CCW) and recommended that “The US EPA should be tasked with the immediate review of all administrative decisions regarding the classification of the myriad forms of CCW and how to insure that disposal practices can insure proper protection of both human and ecological health.”

A few days later the Washington Post reported that the EPA was in fact moving to impose new restrictions on the discharge of CCW into the nation’s waterways. Of special concern to the EPA is the level of selenium found in the wastewater from some power plants. For example, sampling at the Homer City power plant in Indiana County revealed selenium levels 100 times the EPA’s acceptable levels in freshwater.

NOTE: On May 7 Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice jointly issued an analysis of the long-withheld EPA risk assessment of unlined ash ponds, entitled “What the EPA Knows About the Dangers of Coal Ash: A Summary of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007 Human and Ecological Risk Assessment of Coal Combustion Wastes”.

In addition to storing fly ash, unlined ponds are also used to store the sludge from smokestack scrubbers. The EIOP/EJ analysis found that “the EPA data showed a disturbingly high cancer risk for up to one out of every 50 Americans living near wet ponds used to dispose of ash and scrubber sludge from coal-fired power plants across the United States.”

Of the nine Pennsylvanian disposal sites included in the withheld 2007 EPA report, the western Pennsylvania sites were Hatfield’s Ferry (Greene), Homer City (Indiana), Keystone, (Armstrong), Mitschell (Washington ), New Castle (Lawrence), and Shawville (Clearfield).

The failure of two containment lagoons in Tennessee has dramatically highlighted the problem of what to do with the toxic fly ash produced by burning coal in power plants.

A recent NY and Times article points out that there are more than 1,300 similar dumps of fly ash across the country. According to a 2004 report to the state DEP, in Pennsylvania there are 21 pulverized coal-fired (PC) electric generating power plants. These PC power plants burn about 45 million tons of coal annually, resulting in the production of about 5 million tons of coal ash. Although pulverized coal-fired plants produce much less ash per ton of fuel burned than do waste coal plants, disposing of the fly ash is still a problem.

If simply left in landfills, the fly ash leaches into streams and contributes to the problem of acid-mine drainage. To avoid this problem the state DEP has permitted “contained disposal” of the fly ash power plants, just at the TVA has done in Tennessee. Of the fifty-nine fly-ash disposal sites listed in the 2007 EPA damage assessment report, six are in Pennsylvania.

1. Elrama Plant (Reliant Energy) Washington County, near Elizabeth. Scrubbers were upgraded in 2007, which probably means more fly ash.

2. Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant, (Allegheny Energy) Masontown, Greene County. Cited in 2004 as one of the dirtiest coal-fired plants in the country.

3. Zullinger Quarry Fly Ash Disposal Site. Abandoned limestone quarry where 740,000 tons fly ash were deposited from 1973 to 1980.

4. Veterans Quarry, (Domino Salvage Inc) Plymouth Twp., Montgomery County DEP Solid Waste Disposal permit, 2006.

5. Shawville Site, (Penelec), Clearfield County

6. Montour Ash Disposal Area (PPL) Montour county. Demonstration site for ozonation of fly ash to produce concrete-suitable ash.

On January 7 the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) published another analysis of coal ash disposal sites around the country. The single Pennsylvanian site included in the 50-site analysis by EIP was the Little Blue impoundment associated with the Bruce Mansfield power plant in Shippingport, Beaver County. According to Don Hopey’s detailed article on Sunday, the 1,300 acre impoundment was opened in 1975, was due to be closed in 2008, but with state permission it has been enlarged for possible use until at least 2031. Each year the seven-mile underground pipe carries 625,000 tons of fly ash and bottom ash from the power plant to the Little Blue impoundment.

Add the disposal of toxic fly ash to the impacts of mountain top removal, long wall mining, and greenhouse emissions, and one has to conclude that coal is neither “Clean” nor “Cheap”, despite what those billboards say.

Postscript #1. On January 14 the state DEP announced that it would re-inspect high-hazard dams at “coal ash slurry basins. Among the first eight to be re-inspected are: Armstrong County - Cooling Pond A, Beaver County - Little Blue Run Dam, and Westmoreland County - Mill Service #6.

Postscript #2. In collaboration with Earth justice, the Sierra Club’s national Coal Campaign has released a useful two-page fact sheet on Coal Ash.

Close to the end of the Dirty Coal Cycle is fly ash, the residue left when pulverized coal is burned in power plant boilers. Fly ash from Appalachian coal contains small amounts of neurotoxins mercury, arsenic, and selenium.

More than sixty million tons of fly ash are generated in the US every year. Approximately 25 percent of fly ash generated is used in cement, etc., but the rest is disposed of in landfills or storage lagoons.

In Tennessee the dam of one of those lagoons recently collapsed and
3 million cubic feet of fly ash and water flooded hundreds of acres. Apart from the damage done by the flooding, a major concern is what happens when the sludge dries and the ash literally flies around the community.

You won’t see mention of the hazards of fly ash disposal on the coal industry’s Clean and Cheap Coal roadside billboards.

At the other end of the Dirty Coal Cycle is the mining of coal by mountain top removal. A nicely illustrated 12-page article on the topic in West Virginia appeared in the latest issue of the Smithsonian.

You may see where the coal is mined to produce the electricity you use at the I Love Mountains website.

The disposal of fly ash, or Coal Combustion Waste (CCW) at mine sites is a serious environmental problem in Pennsylvania. Millions of tons of toxic CCW are dumped directly on to lands and near waters throughout our Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has failed to acknowledge the very real pollution caused by the leaching of toxic metals from CCW that is dumped as a means of “beneficially” reclaiming mine sites.

Citizens are urged to submit their brief comments to:

• Keith Brady (kbrady at state dot pa dot us) as well as
• Acting Secretary John Hanger, (jhanger at state dot pa dot us)

Deadline for comments is close of business on WEDNESDAY, November 19, 2008.

The major point to be made is that ENFORCEABLE REGULATIONS are essential for the placement of Coal Combustion Wastes at mine sites, NOT technical guidance

These ENFORCEABLE REGULATIONS should include:

• Characterization of all CCW.
• Isolation of ash from all water sources.
• Long-term, comprehensive monitoring of all ash sites.
• Clear standards for corrective actions written into all permits.
• Bonds for monitoring and clean up.
• True public involvement in all CCW permitting decisions.

For more information, contact Lisa Graves Marcucci (lisagmarcucci at gmail dot com).