While carbon dioxide and other emissions generated when coal is burned certainly capture a good deal of press, especially with their direct relation to climate change, there’s another issue that’s generating mountain-sized disasters—literally.
Coal ash, the hazardous byproduct of burning coal to produce power, is a particularly insidious legacy of the nation’s dependence on coal. Unlike the visible and heavily regulated airborne emissions from power plant smokestacks, coal ash is largely unseen unless there is a major spill and, until recently, far less effectively regulated.
More than 100 million tons of coal ash is produced every year, one of the nation’s largest and most vexing streams of toxic waste. The hazardous dust and sludge — containing arsenic, mercury, lead and other heavy metals — fill more than a thousand landfills and bodies of water in nearly every state, threatening air, land, water and human health.
More effective rules regulating the disposal of coal ash were finally put in place in 2015. Unlike the regulations that have been falling weekly under Donald Trump’s signature, the limits on coal ash were passed early enough that they can’t be simply destroyed on a party-line vote using that new favorite weapon of Republicans, the Congressional Review Act. However, that doesn’t mean the rules are by any means safe.
This past week, however, Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a letter to a Minnesota environmental official that the agency would reconsider the rule and delay the 2018 compliance deadline for states.
Meanwhile, aging coal plants continue to pile up huge amounts of ash—and it’s becoming more dangerous by the day.
The hulking Gallatin Fossil Plant sits on a scenic bend of the Cumberland River about 30 miles upstream from Nashville. In addition to generating electricity, the plant, built in the early 1950s by the Tennessee Valley Authority, produces more than 200,000 tons of coal residue a year. That coal ash, mixed with water and sluiced into pits and ponds on the plant property, has been making its way into groundwater and the river, potentially threatening drinking water supplies, according to two current lawsuits.
Over its life, Gallatin has cranked out well over 1 billion tons of ash—enough to recreate the three largest pyramids at Giza, with millions of tons to spare. Unfortunately this ash isn’t sitting in nice stable blocks and it’s not made up of nice, safe limestone.
“In court filings, the state identified at least 10 places where unpermitted and illegal seepage from Gallatin’s coal ash ponds may have occurred, and said the utility’s own reports showed that the groundwater around the site was contaminated with heavy metals at levels exceeding state health standards.
But current law allows states to all but ignore coal ash, and with the political power that TVA holds in Tennessee, it’s not surprising that no public official is trying to stop those leaks. In fact …
On March 14, the Tennessee Valley Authority filed a motion in state court seeking to have the case dismissed, since, it argued, all seepage from the coal ash ponds is legally permitted by the state.
And with Pruitt able to hold up any new EPA rules, expect things to stay that way.