As fly ash piles up, the challenge for safe disposal rises

I thought the following comments shows the mind state of the State of Va:

The foundation for the "beneficial use" provisions of coal-ash regulations was laid in 1980. That's when Congress temporarily exempted coal-combustion byproducts from classification as hazardous waste pending further study by the EPA.

What this meant, effectively, was that coal-ash products would be subject to state - not federal - regulation.

By Robert McCabeThe Virginian-Pilot© July 27, 2008

Coal provides more than half of the nation's electricity and will continue to be the fuel of choice for generating power. In raw terms, it makes sense: The United States sits on a quarter of the world's coal reserves, making it a cheap and abundant energy source.

But as demand mounts, so do the byproducts from burning coal. Millions of tons of "fly ash" - a powdery substance laced with heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead - have piled up in landfills. For power companies, those are costly disposal options, because the fly ash placed there must be treated as a potentially toxic industrial waste.

Coal-power producers and environmental regulators formed a partnership, trying to figure out a cheap and safe way to dispose of the residue.

They shaped a mishmash of rules that vary from state to state, with no federal oversight. They encourage the recycling of fly ash through "beneficial uses," ranging from concrete block and wallboard manufacturing to a variety of in-ground, structural fill uses that include such local projects as Norfolk's Harbor Park baseball stadium and embankments on parts of the Chesapeake Expressway and the Southwest Suffolk Bypass.

Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville, a course in Chesapeake built with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, is the biggest of them all - one of the largest ash reuse projects of its kind in the nation.

City officials began testing water at the site and the homes of nearby residences after The Virginian-Pilot reported March 30 that the soil cap on top of the fly ash had eroded in places and that a series of man-made "lakes" on the course lacked liners that could prevent the leaching of any contaminants. The Pilot also reported that while groundwater-monitoring wells were not required for the course, they were at Dominion Virginia Power's Chesapeake Energy Center, which supplied the fly ash for the project. Construction of the course began in 2002; it opened in fall 2007.

Test results disclosed July 17 confirmed the fears of nearby residents, prompting city officials to request help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Arsenic levels are more than eight times and lead levels more than five times the municipal drinking water standards. Aluminum, one of the other contaminants, exceeds drinking water standards by 500 times.

The site is now on the radar of the EPA's Superfund program and exemplifies a little-known, but growing, problem: how to deal with a mountain of ash generated by the nation's roughly 440 coal-fired power plants.

http://hamptonroads.com/2008/07/fly-ash-piles-challenge-rises-safe-disposal