"Report uses Pines as example of waste problem: Environmental group says federal enforcement needed to ensure safe disposal," is the headline to this story today in the NWI Times. Some quotes:
THE PINES -- Two decades of unsafe disposal of coal combustion waste in The Pines and the resulting groundwater contamination are the focal point of a report, to be released today, calling for stepped-up federal regulation of the waste.Here is the website of the Clean Air Task Force, and here is the link to the report itself: "Report: Not in My Lifetime: The Fight for Clean Water in Town of Pines, Indiana (April 2004)." The accompanying description: "It is a story meant to inspire action, not just in Town of Pines, but nationally, to ensure responsible and environmentally safe disposal practices, particularly for toxic coal combustion wastes."The report, "Not in My Lifetime: The Fight for Clean Water in Town of Pines, Indiana," published by the Clean Air Task Force, will be unveiled at a public hearing on power plant waste disposal in Vincennes, Ind.
The report calls the story of The Pines a "lesson of failed environmental policies at both the state and federal level" and calls on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create federally enforceable regulations governing disposal of the waste. * * *
For at least 19 years, fly ash from the Northern Indiana Public Service Co.'s Michigan City Generating Station was dumped at the unlined Yard 520 landfill in The Pines. Groundwater contamination was traced to that waste, and in 2000 the town was named an EPA Superfund cleanup site.
Earlier Indiana Law Blog coverage on the Town of Pines issues may be found in this Feb. 15, 2004 entry and this entry from Feb. 10, 2004. Here is a map showing the location of the Town of Pines (marked with a star), which is incidently not far from my hometown, Chesterton.
Posted by Marcia Oddi at April 22, 2004 07:55 AM