After years of foot dragging, Alabama Power is taking a small step to deal with the potentially dangerous coal ash pond at one of its power plants. It’s a slow, incremental step. The Alabama Power ash ponds remain in a protracted dispute among the utility, state regulators, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Birmingham-based, Southern Company utility announced last month that it will increase removing ash from the 527-acre coal slurry pond at its 3,426-MW, seven-unit (two legacy coal units and five gas-fired generators) James M. Barry coal-and-gas plant in Bucks, Ala., on the west bank of the Mobile River. The utility has a contract with Utah-based Eco Material Technologies to dewater and use the coal ash as aggregate in construction materials, including concrete.
Eco Material will build and operate an on-site processing facility, expected to be in service by January 2026. According to Alabama Power, “Millions of tons of coal ash are expected to be harvested from Plant Barry and recycled….” The company says it has already recycled “more than 12 million tons of coal ash” from its Gaston, Gorgas, and Miller coal fired plants.
Eco Materials CEO Grant Quasha told AL.com, “The idea is that we want to use as much of it as possible. We won’t know exactly until we get in there, but our goal would be to use over 90% of the material and our technology allows that allows us to do that.”
As the project moves ahead, Al.com reported that Alabama Power “still plans to cover its coal ash ponds in place, pending the uncertainties with the EPA” and the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.”
The utility is in a billion-dollar wrangle with the federal agency over how to prevent damage from its unlined coal waste ponds. The dispute also includes Tennessee Valley Authority coal plants in Alabama. EPA insists that unlined ponds violate the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
The company has already been fined $1.5 million by state regulators for ash problems, but the state and the utility both support covering the ponds in place, while EPA is pushing for digging up the coal wastes and transferring them to a regulated, lined facility.
An EPA decision on the Alabama plants could come anytime, as the agency initially said it would issue its findings and penalties last September.
Managing coal power plant wastes is a national problem, which emerged most dramatically 15 years ago. Sometime around midnight on Dec. 22, 2008, a dike at the coal ash dewatering pond for TVA’s 1,400-MW Kingston plant in Roane County, Tenn., failed. That led to what has been reported as the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.
While the breach caused no injuries, there was widespread damage, eventually causing TVA more than $1 billion and seven years to clean up.
A year ago, the Yale School of the Environment’s YaleEnvironment360 published an article looking at the nationwide coal waste issue. Noting that about 60% of annual U.S. coal ash production is recycled, the article said that “massive amounts still fill at least 746 coal ash impoundments in 43 states nationwide, with waste sites mostly occurring in rural, low-income areas and often in communities of color.”
Coal ash ponds are not only a threat of collapse and subsequent damage, as occurred at Kingston, they also present a problem of leaching toxins. Coal ash contains heavy metals including lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium, and selenium, all of which can endanger human health. Duke University environmental quality professor Avner Vengosh told the Yale publication that the toxic metals “are relatively easily leached out [of coal ash], unlike normal soil.”
The Yale article said, “Rain that falls on unlined coal-ash impoundments — either ponds for storing wet ash or landfills for storing dry ash — can transport those contaminants to underlying groundwater … where it can affect drinking water supplies.”
In Michigan, mlive.com reported that DTE Energy (neé Detroit Edison) wants state regulators to extend the life of its 410-acre coal ash landfill at the four-unit, 3,300-MW Monroe coal fired plant on the shore of Lake Erie “where toxic coal ash residue…is disposed” by up to 15 years. The utility says it plans to close two units in 2028 and the final two in 2032.
–Kennedy Maize