A river Waste

Each year, power companies generate approximately 130 million tons of coal ash — enough to fill a million railroad cars. Industry representatives estimate 43 percent of coal ash now gets recycled in such items as concrete or wallboard — two “beneficial uses” that use one type of coal ash. But that still leaves more than 70 million tons of ash annually for companies to dump in lagoons, landfills, and, more recently, mine pits. Today, there are 194 landfills and 161 ponds containing coal ash in 47 states, according to 2005 data from the Department of Energy, the latest available. Estimates from the EPA in 2000 were higher: 600 total landfills and ponds containing coal ash. And an unknown number of active and abandoned coal mines also are filled with the stuff. These sites are ground zero for the ongoing controversy over coal ash.

Although the industry professes that these sites are safe, the problem is that every year, some of them leak. And what oozes into the soil and water are dangerous substances: antimony, boron, cadmium, selenium, mercury. In July 2006, the National Academy of Sciences identified 24 potentially hazardous metals in coal ash. And the list is likely to grow. As the EPA tightens controls on emissions through the air, power companies are capturing more particulates and metals in the solid wastes, like coal ash. The Academy’s 2006 report documents that result. Commissioned by the EPA, the study examined risks associated with the burgeoning practice of “minefilling,” or dumping coal ash in mines, and catalogued the way the ash can pollute ground and surface water. “The presence of high contaminant levels in many [coal ash] leachates,” says the report, “may create human health and ecological concerns at or near some mine sites over the long term.”

The EPA’s own research mirrors this conclusion. A report prepared for the agency analyzed hazards associated with ponds and landfills, and found that coal ash doesn’t pose a problem for nearby residents when power companies employ such protections as liners. But the threats arise when utilities dump the waste in unlined or partially lined ponds and pits, and there have been more than 180 such sites identified nationwide. Indeed, the analysis determined such sites pose a cancer risk from arsenic at 900 times the level of what was deemed safe. And concentrations of boron soared beyond safety levels for birds, frogs, and fish. Some EPA scientists believe that recent toxicity data would double the assessment of the hazards.