by Sue Sturgis.
A special Facing South investigation.
After coal is burned at power
plants, leaving massive heaps of ash, not all of the waste ends up in
landfills and impoundments like the one that failed
catastrophically in east Tennessee in December 2008.
A growing share of the nation’s coal ash is being reused and recycled,
finding its way into building materials, publicly used land and even
farmland growing food crops. And despite the presence of toxins like
arsenic, chromium, and lead found in coal ash, these reuses go largely
unregulated by state and federal officials.
The latest
report from the American Coal Ash Association, the industry group
representing major coal ash producers, found that of the more than 136
million tons of coal ash produced in 2008, about 44 percent—60
million tons—was reused. Some of the reuses for coal ash, such as
recycling it into concrete, are not very controversial even among
environmental advocates, since they’re believed to lock in toxic
contaminants.
But there are growing concerns about other reuses
of coal ash. For example, the recent revelation that
Chinese-manufactured drywall made with coal ash was releasing noxious
chemicals inside people’s homes spurred a
CBS investigation that also found problems with U.S.-made drywall
products. The discovery led the Consumer Product Safety Commission to
call for a closer look at drywall products made with coal ash.
Another
popular destination for coal ash that is raising concern is its use as a
substitute for fill dirt in construction projects. Because this reuse
can put coal ash directly in contact with groundwater, environmental and
public health advocates fear serious contamination problems. Right now,
the Environmental Protection Agency is mulling
new rules for the use of coal ash, including whether it should
strictly regulate ash used in fills or simply put forward guidelines and
leave oversight up to the states.
As federal officials consider
how to regulate reuse of coal ash, North Carolina’s experience in
overseeing structural fills provides a case study with valuable lessons
for the entire country.
North Carolina: A case study in
neglect?
North Carolina has long been a leader in promoting
the use of coal ash as structural fill. Heavily dependent on coal, with 60
percent of its electricity generated by coal-fired plants, the
state has a glut of ash to contend with—and has been encouraging
utilities to use it as fill for more than 20 years.
“It is
encouraging to see the commitment being made to develop reuse
applications for the coal ash as opposed to the continued use of county
landfills,” stated a
1989 letter from North Carolina’s solid waste chief to ReUse
Technology, now known as Full Circle Solutions. The Georgia-based firm
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Charlotte-based Cogentrix, which in turn
is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Goldman Sachs Group and operates a number of
small coal-fired power plants in the eastern U.S.
The letter
continued, “The Solid Waste Management Section has and will continue to
support the reuse and recycling of waste materials when performed in a
manner consistent with the environment.”
But the use of coal ash
as fill has not always been done in a manner “consistent with the
environment.” Even though North Carolina began overseeing coal ash fills
in 1994 after groundwater contamination was found at one fill site,
state records and independent research show that the rules—which were
cooperatively written by utilities and state regulators—have failed
to prevent coal ash fills from damaging the environment and threatening
public health.
Facing South examined records from the state
Division of Waste Management, which oversees the use of dry coal ash as
fill, and the Division of Water Quality, which is responsible for fills
that use wet coal ash from impoundments like the one that failed at the
Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant. We also considered the
findings of a recent report from the Sierra Club’s North Carolina
chapter titled “Unlined
Landfills? The Story of Coal Ash Waste in Our Backyard.”
The
public record shows that dry coal ash was used as a substitute for fill
dirt at more than 70 locations across North Carolina from the late
1980s through 2009 (click here for a spreadsheet with details about the locations). Sites sitting on
top of coal ash fills include airports, roads, industrial parks,
shopping centers, office buildings, a municipal gym, a church, a science
center at Duke University, a rifle range at a Marine base, and
livestock pens at a commercial hog farm.
Unlike new surface
impoundments where coal ash is dumped in North Carolina, which now must
be lined under state law, liners are not mandated for even the largest
fill sites. As a result, coal ash has contaminated groundwater or
surface water in at least three structural fill sites across the state:
*
At the Alamac Road site in Robeson County, N.C., about 45,000
tons of coal ash from small power plants owned by Cogentrix were used as
structural fill on 12.8 acres of land. ReUse began placing ash at the
site in 1992 without proper state authorization, and state tests of
groundwater near the site found levels of contaminants exceeding state
groundwater standards. In 1993, the North Carolina Division of Solid
Waste Management issued a notice
of violation, stating that tests showed “levels of arsenic,
cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium, sulfate and total dissolved solids”
exceeding safety standards—and that some of the contaminated samples
came from a monitoring site near a private residence thought to have a
drinking water well.
In response, ReUse removed the coal ash from
the site in 1995 with plans to use it elsewhere, including at an
agricultural demonstration project testing the ability of coal ash to
enhance crop yields—an increasingly common
way for coal ash to be reused, especially in the Southeast and
Midwest.
The EPA’s new proposals for coal ash regulation don’t
address the agricultural use of coal ash, but the agency and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture are currently studying such uses and are
scheduled to release a report of their findings in 2012.
* At the
Swift Creek site in Nash County, N.C., ReUse placed coal ash
from Cogentrix plants as fill on a property along Highway 301 beginning
in 1994. Two years later, the company got special
permission from the Division of Waste Management to also use ash
from a facility burning a mix of coal and shredded tires, which contain arsenic and other
toxic substances.
A 2004
letter from the state agency to ReUse, which by then had changed
its named to Full Circle Solutions, reported that state tests of
groundwater samples taken near the site found arsenic at almost three
times the state standard for groundwater and lead at more than four
times the standard. The letter stated, “The detection of contamination
beyond the boundary of the fill shows that constituents from the [coal
ash] are migrating.”
* Though our own review of the division’s
files did not turn up any mention of violations at the location, Sierra
Club found records showing that state environmental inspectors
discovered high levels of arsenic, iron, and selenium in wetlands at the Arthurs
Creek coal ash fill site in Northampton County in 2009. Since 2004,
the 21-acre site has been the dumping ground for ash from
Kentucky-based energy giant E.ON’s Roanoke Valley Energy plant near
Weldon, N.C. There are plans to eventually build office buildings and a
parking lot atop the fill.
The problem of groundwater
contamination at structural fill sites across North Carolina may be even
more widespread, because state law does not require groundwater
monitoring at such sites—or even require regular inspections. Most of
the problems that have been found to date were discovered following
complaints from nearby residents.
The areas of North Carolina
contaminated by coal ash fills are notable for being poor and having
large African-American, Latino, and Native American populations.
While
the statewide poverty rate is 14.6 percent, the poverty rates for the
counties with known damage cases from coal ash fills are much higher—
15.5 percent in Nash County, 26.6 percent in Northampton, and 30.4
percent in Robeson, according to Census Bureau data.
Those counties’ non-white populations are also greater than the state’s
26.1 percent, at 39.4 percent in Nash, 59.4 percent in Northampton and
64.2 percent in Robeson.
Building a community on coal ash
Water contamination is not the only
problem that’s occurred at structural fill sites across North Carolina.
At some of the sites, work occurred without the required notification
of state regulators. At others, the companies improperly excavated the
sites before placing the ash, increasing the risk that the coal ash
would come in contact with groundwater. And in some instances, coal ash
generators may have made ash available for use as fill that shouldn’t
have been allowed because it contained excessive levels of contaminants.
For
example, state Division of Water Quality records show that Progress
Energy distributed ash for fill use that exceeded limits for arsenic.
“Based on your 2007 annual report, 14,025 tons of ash was distributed in
December of 2007 in which the arsenic concentrations of all three
samples exceeded the ceiling and monthly average concentration,”
according to a March
2009 letter from the agency to the company. “Based on the 2008
annual report, five out of the 12 ash samples exceeded the ceiling
concentration.”
Progress Energy’s permit allows coal ash with
arsenic concentrations exceeding those limits to be distributed for fill
as long as it will be overlain by impervious surfaces like pavement so
rainwater can’t penetrate and leach out contaminants. But the division
was apparently not sure that was the case: It asked the company for a
site plan showing where the ash was used, but no plan was included in
the files.
Furthermore, some coal ash fill sites in North
Carolina had problems with erosion that left the toxic waste exposed—
posing a direct threat to local residents.
Among those was the
Fountain Industrial Park site near the city of Rocky Mount in Edgecombe
County, N.C. In 1989, ReUse Technology in cooperation with the Edgecombe
County Development Corp. began placing at the site ash from various
Cogentrix plants as well as from the coal-fired cogeneration facility at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Following
Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the industrial park was turned into a trailer
park for about 370 eastern North Carolina families displaced by the
disaster. Many of the residents were from Princeville, a historic
African-American community that was devastated by flooding from the
storm. By that time the soil covering the fill had eroded, leaving ash
exposed.
Employees of a nearby correctional facility, who for
years had watched industrial-sized trucks dumping large quantities of
unknown materials at the site, began asking if this was a good place to
locate a trailer park. They brought their concerns to the attention of
Saladin Muhammad with the group Black Workers for Justice, who was
working with trailer park residents. He in turn discussed the situation
with graduate students at the University of North Carolina’s School of
Public Health, and one of them—Aaron Pulver—investigated the
situation for his master’s
paper.
Pulver’s experience in trying to track down the
history of the site shows how difficult it can be under the current
regulatory environment for the public to get information about the use
of coal ash for structural fill.
While the Edgecombe County
development officer told Pulver a study of the land had been done prior
to construction of the trailer park, she refused to release it to him— as did the director of the N.C. Office of Temporary Housing.
When
Pulver finally managed to get a copy of the report, he discovered there
had actually been no thorough testing of the site for possible health
impacts before the placement of the trailers. His adviser, UNC
epidemiology professor Dr. Steve Wing, raised concerns about inhalation
of the coal ash dust and children ingesting it while playing in the
dirt.
In response to mounting worries about the site’s safety,
epidemiologists with the state health department collected samples from
the trailer park for testing, comparing the
results to EPA’s standards for potential health effects. One of the
samples exceeded those standards for two contaminants, with arsenic at
25 milligrams per kilogram compared to a recommended level of 22, and
chromium at 31 mg/kg compared to the standard of 30.
However, a press
release put out by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services
—under the headline “SOIL TESTS FIND NO PROBLEMS AT FOUNTAIN TRAILER
PARK”—said only that the soil samples “showed no significant risk”
for the residents. It did not mention the elevated arsenic and chromium
levels.
‘We’ve been unable to bring attention to this’
The problems that have occurred at
coal ash structural fill sites across North Carolina highlight the
difficulty states face in overseeing ash placement programs in the
absence of federal regulations.
Under North Carolina’s rules,
companies placing dry coal ash as fill are supposed to record its
presence on the property deed—a provision fought by Duke Energy,
which along with Progress Energy is one of the state’s two big
investor-owned utilities and a major producer of coal ash.
However,
the Sierra Club found that only 56 percent of the closed structural
fill sites that held 1,000 cubic yards or more of coal ash had complied
with the deed-recording requirement.
State officials aren’t
required to do their own tests of coal ash fill to see if it has
potentially dangerous levels of arsenic of other contaminants—that’s
left up to the companies, and there’s no rule to check the accuracy of
what the companies report. No advance permits are required for fills,
even for the largest sites. And while the state can comment on a
company’s coal ash fill plans, it does not have the power to deny them.
Following
the Kingston disaster in Tennessee in 2008, state Rep. Pricey Harrison
(D-Guilford) tried to change the way coal ash is regulated in North
Carolina, including its use in structural fills. In 2009, she introduced
a bill that would have created a permitting system for coal ash fills—but
the final
version of the legislation that passed the General Assembly and was
signed into law by Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) had the structural fill
provision stripped out.
Instead, the measure simply subjected the
state’s massive coal ash impoundments to dam safety rules, an approach
aimed at preventing catastrophes like Kingston but that does nothing to
protect against potentially more insidious environmental contamination
from ash fills.
But even that basic safeguard was difficult to
win at the state capitol, with the politically
powerful utility companies and electric cooperatives working
against it. “They fought every aspect of the bill tooth and nail,”
Harrison said. “They lobbied hard against even a hearing.”
This
week Harrison introduced another
bill to better regulate structural fill sites in North Carolina.
And as co-chair of the state Environmental Review Commission and House
Environment Committee, she is also planning on holding hearings on coal
ash next month.
Meanwhile, spurred by the Kingston coal ash
disaster in Tennessee, North Carolina regulators have stepped up their
inspections of structural fill sites. In 2009, they visited 48 sites—
and found violations at 28 of them, ranging from water contamination to a
lack of cover that could stop coal ash from escaping fill sites.
But
the regulators themselves acknowledge that more must be done.
“We’ve
been unable to bring the attention to this that we feel it needs,” said
Paul Crissman, chief of the Division of Waste Management’s Solid Waste
Section, which oversees dry coal ash fills.
Since the
recession-triggered state budget crisis began in 2008, Crissman’s staff
has declined from 54 to 49 people, while the workload has increased. He
does not expect that situation to change any time soon, with state
lawmakers facing a $1
billion budget gap.
“We’ve got more work to do in a day than
workers to put at it,” Crissman added.
While North Carolina’s
regulatory approach to coal ash fill has proven inadequate for ensuring
against environmental damages, the administration of Gov. Perdue does
not support strict federal regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste. In
fact, her departments of Transportation and Commerce are both on record opposing that regulatory approach. The state’s Utility Commission and the commission’s Public
Staff also oppose strict regulation, citing cost concerns.
What
next from Washington?
The lack of strong state rules for
using coal ash as structural fill in places like North Carolina has
caused community health and environmental advocates to rest their hopes
for protective standards on Washington.
The EPA’s
much-anticipated new proposals
for regulating coal ash released earlier this month allow for the
continued recycling and reuse of coal ash. However, they draw a
distinction between turning the waste into manufactured products, which
would not be regulated under the proposals, and the reuse of coal ash in
large fills, which as the EPA notes pose “an array of environmental
issues” and would be regulated as a type of land disposal.
How
the EPA will address the issue won’t become clear until after the
comment period for the proposed rules end and final regulations are
announced. The agency has not announced any time line for that.
In
the meantime, patchwork and scatter-shot state regulations like those
in North Carolina continue to carry the day—a situation that
environmental advocates say amounts to allowing utilities to push their
ash waste problems onto the public in dangerous ways.
“Because
this ‘reuse’ is subject to little or no regulation in many states,” contend the watchdog groups Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity
Project, “some structural fills may be little more than dumpsites in
disguise.”
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