Coal Ash Spill Reveals Risks, Lapses in Waste Regulation

[Joanne98]

WASHINGTON — The coal ash spill in Tennessee last month is putting a spotlight on whether the ash from 450 other power plants around the country could be contaminating the nation's drinking water supplies.
Some coal ash is recycled into products such as cement or placed in secure landfills, but much of it ends up in gravel pits, abandoned mines and unlined landfills — or in ponds like the one that burst in Kingston, Tenn., on Dec. 22. In the Tennessee incident, 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge laced with arsenic and other toxic materials poured over 300 acres — making it one of the nation's worst environmental spills.

Three hundred acres were covered with toxic sludge in late December when a wall of a coal ash holding pond near Kingston in East Tennessee gave way. (Wade Payne/Associated Press)The EPA in 2000 decided that coal ash wasn't hazardous waste and left regulation up to the states. Now, however, environmental activists say the Tennessee spill shows the need for federal standards for how coal waste is handled at the coal-fired power plants around the nation.

"It's an insanely dangerous scenario that's been allowed to develop, but it's all under the radar screen," said Jeffrey Stant of the Environmental Integrity Project, a group formed by former EPA enforcement attorneys that's compiling data on coal ash disposal sites.

Stant said most states have lax regulations and that much of the monitoring is done on a voluntary basis by the utilities that own the plants that burn the coal.

He and other activists want the EPA to start with banning the common practice of sluicing coal waste into ponds and storing it there.

"When you put it along a river in an unlined lagoon, you threaten to contaminate the shallow alluvial aquifer that's right under the river," which provides drinking water, Stant said. He said he had no faith in the scientific evidence produced by the utility companies.

The Tennessee Valley Authority says tests show Kingston's drinking water is safe.

"We're not doing anything different than other utilities that have coal plants," said TVA spokesman Gil Francis. About half of the TVA coal waste is put in wet ponds like the one at Kingston, and the rest is compacted in dry ponds. TVA inspects the ponds annually, the state checks them quarterly, and TVA employees look at them daily, he said.

TVA, a corporation owned by the federal government, operates the plant at Kingston where spill occurred. The Kingston Fossil Plant was the largest coal-burning power plant in the world when it began operating in 1955. The plant normally consumes about 14,000 tons of coal a day.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/07-2

Since this is owned by the federal government, why don't we convert it to alternative energy.