When the catastrophic That all changed with the Kingston spill, which aside from releasing a The month after the Tennessee disaster, EPA Jackson But the agency’s efforts soon ran up against massive Fending off ‘burdensome The battle over regulating coal ash In the beginning, coal But Congress’ But “Public In other words, The EPA sent its report to President Bill The After the lobbying But the EPA A Meanwhile, even within the EPA, In 2007, a draft assessment was That same year, a report<\/a> by the EPA Office of Solid Waste tallied up the number of cases The EPA’s internal studies were Earlier this year, for example, the Environmental Recently “These unregulated sites present a Hitting another brick But Washington’s latest effort to Last October, the EPA sent a draft regulation to the The Joining Many As the political The new rules Finally, The Environmental watchdogs expressed “It’s in the public arena now, and that’s really <\/em> <\/em><\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n By the way, is anyone checking on nuclear-plant safety plans?<\/a><\/p>\n Should we prefer investing in renewable energy to cleaning up the dirty stuff?<\/a><\/p>\n
\n coal ash spill<\/a> occurred at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s
\nKingston plant in 2008, a quiet debate over how to regulate coal ash had
\n already been going on for decades, largely outside the view of the
\npublic or press.<\/p>\n
\nbillion gallons of toxic waste into a nearby community and river system
\nalso pushed
\n the problem of coal ash into the national spotlight<\/a> and led to
\ncalls for change.<\/p>\n
\nAdministrator Lisa Jackson signaled during her Senate confirmation
\nhearing that the agency would revisit the issue of coal ash regulation.
\n“The EPA currently has, and has in the past, assessed its regulatory
\noptions, and I think it is time to re-ask those questions,” Jackson said<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nsoon began to make good on her promise. The EPA launched an inventory of
\n coal ash impoundments like the one that failed at Kingston, sending
\ninformation requests to more than 160 electric generation facilities and
\n 60 corporate offices. Armed with this and other data, Jackson and the
\nEPA concluded that the nation’s standards for regulating coal ash needed
\n revision.<\/p>\n
\nresistance from an array of powerful interests—industries and groups
\nthat had succeeded in enabling coal ash to escape federal oversight for
\ndecades, creating a regulatory vacuum that many say made a Kingston-like
\n disaster almost inevitable.<\/p>\n
\nregulatory requirements’<\/strong><\/p>\n
\ngoes back to 1976, when Congress passed the Resource Conservation and
\nRecovery Act<\/a>, the main federal law that governs disposal of
\nhazardous and non-hazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\ncombustion waste was not included in RCRA, and in 1978 EPA proposed that
\n coal ash be covered under the law as a special hazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\n before that happened, Congress passed the Bevill Amendment in 1980,
\nwhich effectively exempted the coal waste from RCRA. The amendment was named for Rep. Tom
\nBevill<\/a>, a 15-term Democratic congressman from coal-dependent Alabama
\n who chaired the powerful House Energy Development and Water
\nAppropriations Subcommittee. During congressional debate, Bevill declared<\/a> that “it would be unreasonable for EPA to impose costly and burdensome
\nregulatory requirements without knowing if a problem really exists, and
\nif it does, the true nature of that problem.” Bevill’s amendment called
\non the agency to delay regulation and study the matter instead.<\/p>\n
\n reluctance to regulate was reinforced when the EPA went on to release
\ntwo reports—one in 1988 and another in 1999—finding that damages
\nfrom coal ash did not warrant lifting the regulatory exemption.<\/p>\n
\n in 2000, the agency began to change course. That year, as required by
\nthe Bevill Amendment, the EPA published a proposal titled “Regulatory
\nDetermination on Wastes from the Combustion of Fossil Fuels” that
\nconcluded federal regulations for the disposal of coal ash—either
\nunder RCRA and\/or the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act—were
\n necessary to protect public health and the environment.<\/p>\n
\ncomments and other analyses … have convinced EPA that these wastes
\ncan, and do, pose significant risks to human health and the environment
\nwhen not properly managed, and there is sufficient evidence that
\nadequate controls may not be in place for a significant number of
\nfacilities,” the
\nproposal found<\/a>. “This, in our view, justifies the development of
\ntailored regulations under Subtitle C of RCRA.”<\/p>\n
\nthe EPA was saying that it was finally ready to treat coal ash as
\nhazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\nClinton’s White House Office of Management and Budget for review. An EPA
\n employee involved in the internal debate told the Center
\nfor Public Integrity<\/a> “it really hit a brick wall at OMB.”<\/p>\n
\n administration was flooded with letters from electric utilities and
\nvisits from their lobbyists warning that regulating coal ash as
\nhazardous waste would lead to economic hardship for them and their
\ncustomers. New standards would increase the cost of disposing of coal
\nash waste, an extra cost the EPA estimated at about $1 billion per year.
\n But industry representatives argued the cost would be astronomically
\nhigher—perhaps upwards of $13 billion.<\/p>\n
\nonslaught, EPA backed away from regulating coal ash as hazardous waste
\nin 2000. But the agency promised to issue guidelines to help states
\noversee it more effectively—a critical step, since most states lacked
\n even basic safeguards for coal ash disposal sites.<\/p>\n
\ndidn’t follow through. And without federal guidelines, states continued
\nwith business as usual. Five years later, a report prepared for EPA’s
\nOffice of Solid Waste found that most states didn’t require monitoring
\nthe impact of coal ash disposal sites on groundwater, more than half
\ndidn’t require liners, and more than a quarter didn’t even require
\nsomething as basic as dust controls at coal ash landfills. The report
\nalso found that most of the coal ash produced in the top 25
\ncoal-consuming states could legally be disposed of in a way that
\ndirectly threatened drinking water supplies in underground aquifers.<\/p>\n
\n consensus for regulation grows<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nevidence was mounting that coal ash posed a growing threat to
\nenvironmental and human health.<\/p>\n
\nprepared for the EPA titled “Human
\n and Ecological Risk Assessment of Coal Combustion Wastes”<\/a> that
\nfound some unlined coal ash impoundments pose a cancer risk 2,000 times
\nabove what the government considers acceptable. The assessment found
\nthat the use of a composite
\n liner<\/a>—a multi-layered liner like those required in municipal
\nwaste landfills—significantly reduced the risk of exposure to
\nhealth-threatening pollution. However, most states don’t require such
\nliners for coal ash impoundments.<\/p>\n
\nnationwide where coal ash was found to have caused environmental damage,
\n documenting 24 cases of proven damages caused by coal ash and another
\n43 potential damage cases related to coal ash. Most of those cases
\ninvolve toxic contamination from coal ash impoundments leaching into
\ngroundwater, rivers, and lakes. (For a map with more details about confirmed U.S. damage cases, click here<\/a>.<\/em>)<\/p>\n
\ncomplemented by a growing body of research by independent scientists and
\n advocacy groups documenting the environmental and health consequences
\nof coal ash.<\/p>\n
\nIntegrity Project and Earthjustice released a report titled “Out
\n of Control: Mounting Damages From Coal Ash Waste Sites”<\/a> that found
\nserious water contamination problems from coal ash dumps at 31 locations
\n in 14 states. The report noted that the contamination is concentrated
\nin communities with family poverty rates above the national median.<\/p>\n
\n the EPA also acknowledged that toxic elements like arsenic, chromium,
\nand selenium can leach out of unlined coal ash dumps and into local
\nwater supplies in much higher concentrations than was earlier believed.
\nAfter 20 years of using a testing method that the EPA’s own Science
\nAdvisory Board argued was low-balling the contamination risk, the agency
\n recently began
\n using an updated test<\/a> that found the level of toxic contaminants
\nleaching into water clearly crossed the threshold for designating coal
\nash as a hazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\nclear and present danger to public health and the environment,” said
\nEarthjustice attorney and former EPA official Lisa Evans. “If law and
\nscience are to guide our most important environmental decisions, as EPA
\nAdministrator Lisa Jackson has promised, we need to regulate these
\nhazards before they get much worse.”<\/p>\n
\nwall<\/strong><\/p>\n
\nregulate coal ash—spurred by the TVA disaster—has again met
\nmassive resistance from a familiar array of powerful political
\ninterests.<\/p>\n
\nWhite House Office of Management and Budget. The proposed rules
\nimmediately became the target of a massive lobbying
\n onslaught<\/a> by electric utilities and energy interests determined to
\nprevent coal ash from being regulated as hazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\nCharleston Gazette<\/em> reported<\/a> that OMB held 30 meetings about the rules with industry officials
\ncompared to only 12 with environmental and public health groups. The
\nintense lobbying campaign was notable because of the electric utility
\nindustry’s already considerable clout in Congress: One of the most
\npolitically generous, it’s contributed more
\n than $9 million<\/a> to members’ campaigns during the 2009-2010 election
\n cycle so far, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.<\/p>\n
\n the lobbying effort were state
\n agencies and federal lawmakers<\/a> who voiced concern about the cost of
\n strict regulation and how it would affect the recycling of coal ash
\ninto products and its use as fill in construction projects.<\/p>\n
\nof the congressional defenders of coal ash represent states where the
\ntoxic waste has been implicated in environmental damages. For example, a
\n Facing
\n South analysis<\/a> found more than 50 proven and suspected coal ash
\ndamage cases in the states represented by the more than 90 senators and
\nrepresentatives who wrote to the Obama administration opposing the
\nregulation of coal ash as hazardous waste.<\/p>\n
\nbattle raged behind closed doors, the latest push to regulate coal ash
\nseemed like it might again be derailed. The EPA originally said it would
\n roll out a proposed rule for public comment by the end of 2009, but the
\n release was postponed with the agency blaming
\n the delay<\/a> on the “complexity of the analysis.”<\/p>\n
\n were then supposed
\n to be released<\/a> in April 2010, but were put off again.<\/p>\n
\n earlier this month the EPA released
\n the rules<\/a> to the public. But instead of issuing a clear standard
\nthat would treat coal ash as a hazardous waste as
\n it originally planned<\/a>, the agency released
\n two options<\/a>: one that would empower the federal government to
\noversee the material like other hazardous waste, and one that would
\ntreat coal ash like ordinary trash and leave oversight up to the states.<\/p>\n
\n agency asked the public to help decide which approach makes the most
\nsense during a three-month comment period that will begin when the
\nregulation is published in the Federal Register, which is expected to
\nhappen as soon as this week.<\/p>\n
\ndisappointment over the agency’s equivocation. Eric Schaeffer, a former
\nEPA official who now directs the nonprofit Environmental Integrity
\nProject, said the move “sets up a boxing ring.” However, he also said he
\n sees value in moving the fight from behind OMB’s closed doors out into
\nthe open.<\/p>\n
\nimportant to move things along,” he said.<\/em><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.29804.rss.News.18590,cat.News.rss\"\/)
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"