Enviros urge EPA to regulate coal ash

More than 100 leading national and grassroots environmental groups today urged Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to regulate coal ash. The groups said action is urgently needed, especially given the December disaster at the TVA Kingston Plant in East Tennessee (See AP photo above).

In a letter to Jackson, the organizations — ranging from Earthjustice, Sierra Club and Greenpeace to the League of Women Voters of Tennessee and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth — spelled out 12 specific recommendations for action by EPA and other government agencies:

(1) The EPA has been weighing whether and how to regulate coal combustion wastes for at least a decade, while this toxic material has continued to leak or spill from unsafe dumpsites. Nearly five years ago, a coalition of 125 environmental groups petitioned the Agency to stop disposal of coal ash in the kind of wet “surface impoundment” that gave way in Kingston. The evidence is in, and the Agency needs to act now to regulate the disposal of coal combustion wastes under subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
(2) The EPA should consult with the Office of Surface Mining and other federal agencies as appropriate. But the EPA must assume the lead responsibility for writing the rules, as it is the federal agency with the broadest statutory mandate to protect both human health and the environment, and because it has the expertise and experience to write and enforce hazardous waste regulations.
(3) Standards should be designed to protect both public health and natural resources, taking into account existing federal and state standards for protecting drinking water and aquatic life

(4) Regulations should apply to all forms of land disposal, not just surface
impoundments, and should be designed to prevent slow leaks as well as
catastrophic structural failures. EPA’s 2007 “Human and Ecological Risk
Assessment from Coal Combustion Wastes” documented the highest cancer risks from surface impoundments, but also found unacceptable health risks from clay-lined coal combustion waste landfills leaking arsenic into groundwater. The same study showed that both impoundments and landfills threaten to overwhelm aquatic ecosystems with toxic levels of other heavy metals.

5) The wet storage or disposal of coal combustion waste should be phased out. All containment structures around coal combustion waste surface impoundments should be examined immediately to ensure their structural stability, and contained wastes should be transferred to lined and consistently covered landfills located outside of flood plains. Active surface impoundments should be closed and emptied within two years. Monitoring and cleanup standards should be required for impoundments that have already closed, and any remaining ash should be transferred to dry disposal sites within five years.

6) Coal combustion waste should be carefully analyzed to determine its toxic
constituents and the likelihood that contaminants will leach under real world
conditions. This characterization should include test measures called for in the National Research Council’s 2006 report, Managing Coal Combustion Residues in Mines, and recommended by the EPA’s own Science Advisory Board to evaluate the hazards of coal combustion waste at existing and proposed disposal sites.
(7) The topography and hydrogeology of proposed disposal sites should be carefully examined to evaluate the likelihood that toxic metals and other contaminants will migrate offsite. Siting requirements should keep coal combustion waste landfills out of locations that are vulnerable to leaks, contamination, or major breaches of waste into the surrounding environment, such as flood plains, wetlands, sandy or gravel soils, shallow groundwater tables, active seismic fault lines, karst zones, and sensitive wildlife habitat.
(8) Coal combustion waste disposal facilities should be designed to prevent offsite contamination. Standards should include placement of waste well above the water table, composite synthetic liners to prevent leaks, leachate collection systems to trap and treat any wastes that do escape, caps and covers to minimize the creation of leachate, and fugitive dust controls to eliminate dispersion of dust or fine particles. The discharge of any wastes into groundwater, surface water or air should be strictly prohibited.
(9) Groundwater and surface water should be sampled to fully characterize baseline predisposal) water quality and monitored above and below a disposal site and in likely pathways for offsite migration of toxic metals or other pollutants. Samples should be collected frequently enough to detect contamination and long enough to take into account that pollutants may be released over an extended period of time. Monitoring should be designed with clear corrective action standards to detect and prevent contamination from the full range of pollutants that are associated with coal combustion waste.

(10) Site owners and operators should assume responsibility for monitoring of disposal sites for at least 30 years after closure, and for cleaning up any
contamination that may result during that time. Owners or operators should be required to demonstrate that they have the financial means to meet these
obligations and post appropriate financial assurance to ensure these obligations are promptly met.
(11) Federally enforceable permits should be required for the construction or
operation of new or expanded coal combustion waste disposal sites. The public should have the opportunity to participate in permit proceedings, submit comments, request a public hearing, and appeal a final decision by EPA or the authorized state agency.
(12) Unsafe practices should not be sheltered under so-called “beneficial use”
exemptions. In particular, the use of coal ash to “reclaim” surface or
underground mines, including abandoned mines, should be subject to the same stringent standards to prevent offsite contamination that apply to land disposal facilities. As recommended by the National Research Council, the characteristics of both coal combustion waste and potential reclamation sites should be evaluated to determine whether minefilling is suitable for specific locations. EPA, in consultation with the Office of Surface Mining, should promulgate enforceable federal regulations governing the disposal of coal ash in mines.