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Saturday, December 27, 2008

Environment - "Spill renews debate over coal ash: Toxicity, slurry pond safety are questioned"

Updating this ILB entry from Dec. 25th, James Bruggers of the Louisville Courier Journal has this long story today. First, a quote from the middle of the story:

Indiana Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Rob Elstro said he was unable to determine how many ash ponds the state had.
Now taking it from the top:
The fallout from this week's giant coal-ash slurry spill is reaching far beyond the blackened Tennessee valley that's now buried in power-plant waste.
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The spill has reignited the national debate over whether federal standards should be established to store and dispose of the waste left from burning coal.

It's also fueling a debate in Kentucky, which leads the nation in coal-ash production.

The spill is prompting renewed calls for the Kentucky General Assembly to require emergency-action plans for about 200 dams and impoundments (including at least four that contain coal ash) that are considered high-risk -- meaning they could cause death or serious damage if they fail.

State environmental officials are also making sure those high-risk dams are being inspected on schedule -- at least once every two years as the regulations require.

"Anytime something like that occurs, you have to reassess your situation to make sure you aren't vulnerable to the same thing," said Bruce Scott, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection. "It's absolutely critical we make sure our inspections are occurring and (the inspectors) are checking for everything they need to check for."

The spill also comes at a vulnerable time for the coal industry -- just as a new Congress and President-elect Barack Obama prepare to rewrite the nation's energy policy to tackle climate change, blamed largely on fossil fuels.

"There's going to be a renewed emphasis particularly by the environmental advocacy groups to push against coal," said David Goss, executive director of the American Coal Ash Association. Coal-mining "states like Kentucky and West Virginia have a real battle on their hands."

Early Monday morning at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, Tenn., a dam broke and a 40-acre coal-ash containment pond spilled about 1 billion gallons of slurried ash over an area about the size of Louisville's Cherokee Park, covering it several feet deep in places and damaging at least 12 homes.

The spill dwarfs the 300 million gallons spilled in 2000 in the Massey Energy coal slurry disaster in Martin County, Ky.

More from the lengthy story:
Scott, with the state environmental agency, said Kentucky has 19 ash ponds at coal-fired power plants. Twelve are contained by some sort of dam, as was the ash at the TVA plant.

The four considered high risk are at Kentucky Power's Big Sandy Plant in Lawrence County; Kentucky Utilities' E.W. Brown Generating Station in Mercer County and Ghent Generating Station in Carroll County; and LG&E's Cane Run Generating Station in Jefferson County.

LG&E's Mill Creek plant has one of two "moderate risk" ponds in the state.

Scott said he's not aware of any Kentucky ponds where huge quantities of ash are allowed to pile up behind a dam, as the TVA allowed in Tennessee. The six other Kentucky ash ponds are dug into the ground, with no dams that could fail, he said.

"We don't have any mountains of ash," said Chris Whelan, a spokeswoman for E.On U.S., corporate parent of KU and LG&E. She said they expand the size of the ponds, if needed, and try as much as possible to use the ash. * * *

Ever since the Martin County spill, environmentalists and coal field residents pushed harder to require that impoundments classified as moderate or high hazard have a functioning emergency-action plan, said Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council.

These plans would identify emergency scenarios in case of a failure.

They would also determine who is at risk by mapping the potential "foot print" of any flood or spill, and include a public notification plan, FitzGerald said.

The lessons of the TVA spill are clear, said Judy Petersen, with Kentucky Waterways Alliance: "We just can't put all this waste in these huge ponds and expect it to be safe." * * *

With images of the blackened Tennessee landscape getting national attention, some environmentalists are asking whether coal can ever be described as a "clean" fuel.

That's a key debate to Kentucky and Indiana, which get more than 90 percent of their electricity from coal.

Taker a look at this LCJ slideshow titled "Coal ash near Louisville."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 27, 2008 09:46 AM
Posted to Environment