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AP – In this Dec. 22, 2008 file photo, an aerial view shows the aftermath of a retention pond wall collapse … WASHINGTON – Millions of tons of toxic coal ash is piling up in power plant ponds in 32 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.
Records indicate that 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.
"Surface impoundment controls occur at a significantly lower rate," the EPA concluded. And the pressure exerted by water "increases the likelihood of releases."
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.
Over the years, the government has found increasing evidence that coal ash ponds and landfills taint the environment and pose risks to humans and wildlife. In 2000, when the EPA first floated the idea of a national standard, the agency knew of 11 cases of water pollution linked to ash ponds or landfills. In 2007, that list grew to 24 cases in 13 states with another 43 cases where coal ash was the likely cause of pollution.
The leaks and spills are blamed for abnormalities in tadpoles. The heads and fins of certain fish species were deformed after exposure to the chemicals.
Hale said the national standard would require monitoring for leaks at older, unlined sites and require the company to respond when they occur.
The industry already runs a voluntary program encouraging energy companies to install groundwater monitors. Industry officials argue that a federal regulation will do little to prevent pollution at older dump sites.
"Having federal regulations isn't going to solve those problems," said Jim Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activity Group, a consortium of electricity producers. "What you have to look at is what the current state regulatory programs are. The state programs continue to evolve."
Despite improvements in state programs, many states have little regulation other than requiring permits for discharging into waterways — as required by the federal Clean Water Act.
In North Carolina, where 14 power plants disposed of 1.3 million tons in ponds in 2005, state officials do not require operators to line their ponds or monitor groundwater, safety measures that help protect water supplies from contamination.
Similar safety measures are not required in Kentucky, Alabama, and Indiana.
And while other states like Ohio have regulations to protect groundwater, those often don't apply to many of the older dumps built before the state rules were imposed.
"The solution is readily available to the EPA," said Lisa Evans, an attorney for Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy group. "We wouldn't like it, but they could say that municipal solid waste rules apply to coal ash. They could have done that, but instead they chose to do absolutely nothing."
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