Ken Ward Jr. reports on the wonders of coal:

Nearly two-thirds of the coal-ash dams across West Virginia might need repairs, and a quarter of them are ranked as being in poor or unsatisfactory condition, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Environmental Protection.

DEP inspectors found stability problems, seepage and erosion at some of the dams as part of a roughly 10-month “comprehensive review” launched after the failure of a coal-ash impoundment in East Tennessee brought new attention to such facilities.

Agency officials also found problems that prompted at least five enforcement actions at landfills where dry waste products from coal-fired power plants were dumped, according to the 44-page DEP report.

Here is the report:

18349_Status of WV Fly Ash Dams-Landfills –

Clean Coal is awesome:

It has been six years since a contractor from Delray Beach brought the black dusty residue to the province of Samaná, and three years since the ash was cleaned up. Several civil lawsuits and criminal cases later, just when everyone thought it was over, the other shoe has dropped.

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

…

The ash, a concentrated form of naturally occurring contaminants, is what is left over from burning coal for power. It usually contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel. But as towns in Tennessee and Maryland clean up massive spills of the substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to rule on whether it should be classified as hazardous — which would be a tremendous blow to influential power companies that have long lobbied against such a classification.

Learn more about clean coal.

Facing South:

An in-depth review of monitoring data from coal ash ponds located next to 13 coal-burning power plants in North Carolina has revealed that all of them are contaminating groundwater with toxic metals and other pollutants — in some cases at levels exceeding 380 times state groundwater standards.The contaminants reported include arsenic, cadmium, chromium and lead — metals known to cause cancer, neurological problems and other serious illnesses.

The analysis was conducted by Appalachian Voices’ Upper Watauga Riverkeeper team based on data submitted to state regulators by Duke Energy and Progress Energy, the state’s two largest investor-owned electric utilities. The companies conducted the tests as part of a self-monitoring agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The following two documents explain the key findings of the study.

Every well at every plant had a violation:

Final_Duke_Progress_Coal_Ash_Pond_Ground_Water_Violations_October_2009 –

There were 681 violations, up to 380 times the standard:

Final_Duke_Progress_Coal_Ash_Pond_Ground_Water_Violations_Maximum_October_2009 –

Huffington Post Green:

Leslie Stahl on Sunday’s 60 Minutes did an in-depth look at the problems with the by-products of coal production, commonly known as coal ash. Coal ash contains many toxic medals, including arsenic, which unchecked, can leak into ground water and be extremely hazardous to breathe. Stahl starts with a look at devastating coal ash spill that engulfed homes and destroyed whole communities in Tennessee in 2008 when a billion gallons of the toxic sludge in the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the US. This disaster brought the issue of coal ash to the national spotlight, and Stahl moves on to how to how coal ash is not labeled a hazardous waste by the EPA, and is currently being used as filler in everything from golf courses to carpeting in schools to kitchen counters.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Press Release from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to revise the existing standards for water discharges from coal-fired power plants to reduce pollution and better protect America’s water. Wastewater discharged from coal ash ponds, air pollution control equipment, and other equipment at power plants can contaminate drinking water sources, cause fish and other wildlife to die and create other detrimental environmental effects.

Earlier this year, EPA completed a multi-year study of power plant wastewater discharges and concluded that current regulations, which were issued in 1982, have not kept pace with changes that have occurred in the electric power industry over the last three decades. Air pollution controls installed to remove pollution from smokestacks have made great strides in cleaning the air people breathe, saving lives and reducing respiratory and other illnesses. However, some of the equipment used to clean air emissions does so by “scrubbing” the boiler exhaust with water, and when the water is not properly managed it sends the pollution to rivers and other waterbodies. Treatment technologies are available to remove these pollutants before they are discharged to waterways, but these systems have been installed at only a fraction of the power plants.

As part of the multi-year study, EPA measured the pollutants present in the wastewater and reviewed treatment technologies, focusing mostly on coal-fired power plants. Many of the toxic pollutants discharged from these power plants come from coal ash ponds and the flue gas desulfurization systems used to scrub sulfur dioxide from air emissions.

Once the new rule for electric power plants is finalized, EPA and states would incorporate the new standards into wastewater discharge permits.

More information about EPA’s study is provided in an interim report published in August 2008. A final study will be published later this year.

Talking Points Memo:

The toxic leftovers from burning coal for power are sitting in nearly 600 sites in 35 states, according to a federal survey released Tuesday.Spills have occurred at 34 of those sites over the last decade.

Many of the spills were minor compared with the disaster that occurred at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant in Kingston, Tenn., in December. That spill, which flooded hundreds of acres of land, damaged homes and killed fish in nearby rivers, is not included in the data, although it triggered the EPA’s March request of 61 power companies for information on how they manage coal combustion waste.

The survey is the most comprehensive list to date of coal ash storage sites and includes information submitted by 219 facilities.

Here is a summary of responses to the survey:

survey2 –

Full responses From Electric Utilities to the EPA information request letter can be found here.

New York Times:

UNIONTOWN, Ala. — Almost every day, a train pulls into a rail yard in rural Alabama, hauling 8,500 tons of a disaster that occurred 350 miles away to a final resting place, the Arrowhead Landfill here in Perry County, which is very poor and almost 70 percent black.

To county leaders, the train’s loads, which will total three million cubic yards of coal ash from a massive spill at a power plant in east Tennessee last December, are a tremendous financial windfall. A per-ton “host fee” that the landfill operators pay the county will add more than $3 million to the county’s budget of about $4.5 million.

Here is TVA’s Ash Disposal Plan:

Approved Offsite Ash Disposal Options Plan –

Review of the Kingston Fossil Plan Ash Spill –

Story at the Tennessean.

Via EPA.

(ATLANTA – June 15, 2009) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced an extension of the public comment period on the Administrative Record for the Administrative Order and Agreement on Consent (AOC) entered into between EPA and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) regarding the TVA Kingston Fossil Fuel Plant Release Site, in Roane County, Tenn.

The Administrative Record file includes the AOC itself, as well as the documents which support the AOC. All interested persons are encouraged to review and comment on the documents.

The documents are available online at http://www.epa.gov/region4/kingston/admin_record.html, and will also be available for public review during normal business hours at the following locations:

TVA Kingston Outreach Center Harriman Public Library
509 North Kentucky Street 601 Walden Street
Kingston, Tenn. Harriman, Tenn.
865-882-3195 865-882-3195

and

U.S. EPA Records Center-Region 4
Sam Nunn Federal Center 11th Floor
61 Forsyth Street, SW
Atlanta, Ga.
Attn: Debbie Jourdan

EPA will accept comments regarding the Administrative Record during the public comment period which began on Monday, May 18, 2009, and will now end on Friday, July 20, 2009, allowing for an additional thirty (30) days for the public to comment. Comments should be addressed to Stephanie Brown at brown.stephaniey@epa.gov or:

Stephanie Y. Brown
Community Involvement Coordinator
U.S. EPA Region 4,
OSPAO, 11th Floor
61 Forsyth Street, S.W.
Atlanta, GA 30303

At the end of the comment period, a written response to all pertinent comments will be prepared in a responsiveness summary and placed in the file.

For additional information about the AOC and EPA’s response, visit: http://www.epa.gov/region4/kingston/index.html

Via EPW.

Today I want to provide an important update on our ongoing investigation into the management of coal ash waste throughout the country and the potential threat this waste poses to our communities.

At 1:00 a.m. on December 22, 2008, a retaining wall failed on an 84-acre surface impoundment holding a half century’s worth of coal ash at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston coal-fired power plant.

More than one billion gallons of coal combustion waste rushed down the valley like a wave, covering more than 300 acres. The volume of ash and water was 100 times greater than the amount of oil spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The cost of cleaning up that spill has been estimated at over a billion dollars.

After the devastating Kingston spill, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee immediately held an oversight hearing to better understand this incident and how to avoid similar disasters in the future.

When EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson came before our Committee for her confirmation hearing a week later, she committed to move immediately to address the threat posed by coal ash waste.

I want to commend EPA today for its quick action.

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