In a long-running environmental dispute between the federal government and the state of Alabama, Alabama Power, a Southern Co. utility, is facing potential costs of billions of dollars to clean up its coal ash ponds. Disposing of coal combustion residues is a problem going back decades, and Alabama Power is likely to become the most recent case of the heavy costs of delay.
The Birmingham utility is waiting for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to bring the hammer down on what the federal agency found last August is a failure of the state plan to comply with rules for ash disposal at the utility’s retired Gadsden plant and several others, and at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Colbert plant and others. The EPA found that Alabama’s coal ash program does not meet federal standards under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. EPA gave the state 60 days to respond to the finding.
Alabama Power has already been fined $1.5 million for groundwater contamination at its coal ash ponds under state rules.
EPA held a public hearing Sept. 20 on its proposed action that could force Alabama Power to dig up the ash ponds at Gadsden that were designed to meet the state’s more limited rules, then haul the approximately 100 tons of residues to a lined, federally approved landfill. Both the investor-owned utility and TVA have spent millions so far on their legacy ash ponds, under rules prior to 2015, when the EPA proposed new ash disposal rules administered by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
The Gadsden plant, which went into service in 1913 and converted to gas in 2015, closed earlier this year, leaving behind a coal ash pond that EPA says is still leaching dangerous chemicals, including arsenic and mercury, into Alabama’s waters. In 2020, the utility estimated that a lesser remediation plan – “cover in place” — than what EPA has proposed would cost $3.3 billion. The cost of removing the ash and burying it in an approved landfill is surely much higher.
The AL.com news site described the convoluted regulatory history that has led to the current jeopardy to Alabama Power. When EPA enacted new rules, Alabama was one of four states that quickly proposed new state rules to satisfy EPA’s new approach, expecting that the Trump EPA, much more favorable to utilities, would sign off. “But the state didn’t run fast enough to get its program approved by the EPA before Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020,” AL.com wrote. “Then, while waiting on the federal thumbs up, Alabama threatened to sue the Biden EPA for not approving the state’s plan quickly enough.”
EPA responded in August by proposing to invalidate the entire Alabama program. Biden administration EPA administrator Michael Regan said, “Exposure to coal ash can lead to serious health concerns like cancer if the ash isn’t managed appropriately. Low-income and underserved communities are especially vulnerable to coal ash in waterways, groundwater, drinking water, and in the air. This is why EPA works closely with states to ensure coal ash is disposed of safely, so that water sources remain free of this pollution and communities are protected from contamination.”
Frank Holleman, director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s coal ash program, said Alabama regulators and utilities “went ahead and capped those ponds without first determining they were in compliance with the federal rule. That was an unwise act, a wasteful act to go ahead and cap a site without first ensuring its compliance with all the laws.”
The problems of coal ash ponds made national page one news in 2008. Sometime around midnight on Dec. 22, 2008, a dike at the coal ash dewatering pond for TVA’s 1,400-MW Kingston coal-fired plant in Roane County, Tenn., failed. That led to what has been reported as the largest industrial spill in U.S. history.
TVA and EPA initially estimated that the event released 1.7 million cubic yards of gray sludge. The EPA later upped the estimate to 5.4 million cubic yards. While there were no injuries, the spill damaged a score of private dwellings. The plume reached the Clinch River miles away. The event eventually cost TVA about $1 billion and took seven years to clean up.
—Kennedy Maize
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