Federal environmental regulators released proposed changes to two rules related to the disposal of coal ash and wastewater from coal-fired power plants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced its third round of changes to its 2015 rule regulating coal ash. Coal ash is one of the largest waste streams in the country and often contains toxic compounds like arsenic, lead, and radium. Dozens of the waste sites dot the Ohio Valley, often along rivers.
The Obama-era regulation requires utilities to conduct groundwater monitoring at ponds and landfills, close leaking ash ponds and clean up polluted groundwater.
Last year, the Trump administration extended the closure deadline through October 2020. Now, it’s proposing to move the deadline two months sooner, in part to address legal challenges surrounding the rule.
The rule also lays out a series of provisions that would allow coal ash sites to remain open longer, including if the nearby coal-fired power plant is scheduled to close. Sites can also request a closure extension if the plant needs time to figure out how to dispose of other waste being placed into coal ash sites.
“At first glance they’re like, ‘oh, it used to be October. Now it’s August — that’s better,’” said Larissa Liebmann, an attorney with Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental watchdog group. “But then they’ve created all these alternatives, which give them this extra time based on various issues.”
The toxic residue from burning coal is a major concern in the Ohio Valley. An analysis by the ReSource and partner station WFPL found nearly every power plant covered under the EPA rules had coal ash waste sites with evidence of contaminated groundwater. At several sites, hazardous compounds are found in groundwater at levels that far exceed federal drinking water standards.
The EPA is also proposing changes to another 2015 rule that regulates water discharged from power plants, also known as effluent.
The Steam Electric Power Plant Effluent Guidelines Rule set federal limits on the levels of toxic metals in wastewater that can be discharged from power plants. The rule required affected plants to install technology to reduce discharge.
Similar to the coal ash regulation, the wastewater rule was also embroiled in legal challenges.
In its proposed updates, the EPA is relaxing some pollution limits and extending the compliance deadline by two years. In exchange, the agency is promoting its voluntary incentives program.
In a press release, EPA said the new effluent rule would achieve greater pollution reductions than the 2015 rule, at a lower cost.
Environmental groups disagree and argue the rule change will instead expose millions of people to toxic pollution.
“Not only does [EPA Administrator Andrew] Wheeler’s proposal eliminate some of the strongest pollution limits required by the 2015 rule, it carves out new polluter loopholes for the industry,” Jennifer Peters, with Clean Water Action, said in a statement. “Wheeler’s proposal also claims that power plants will voluntarily adopt new, stricter standards, despite the fact that a similar program existed in the 2015 rule, and virtually no coal plants adopted it.”
Edison Electric Institute, a trade association that represents investor-owned utilities, praised EPA’s efforts to rewrite the effluent rule.
More than 90 percent of the nation’s regulated coal ash repositories are leaking unsafe levels of toxic chemicals into nearby groundwater, including ash sites at more than 30 coal-fired power plants in the Ohio Valley.
The data show unsafe levels of pollutants including lead, arsenic and mercury are leaking into nearby groundwater from coal ash sites at 14 coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, 10 in Ohio, and 7 in West Virginia.
“This is a crisis because coal ash is poisoning an invaluable and irreplaceable resource,” said Lisa Evans, senior counsel with the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, and one of the co-authors of the report. “Even if this water is not now used for drinking, contaminated groundwater flows to lakes and streams and can contaminate these waters making them unsafe for fishing, recreation and irrigation.”
The groups analyzed industry-supplied groundwater data required by the U.S. EPA under its 2015 coal ash rule. The Obama-era regulation requires utilities to not only conduct groundwater monitoring at ponds and landfills, but close leaking ash ponds and clean up polluted groundwater.
The first round of data was posted last spring and includes eight rounds of testing for 21 pollutants.
While the 2015 rule does not apply to all coal ash sites across the country, Abel Russ, senior attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project and lead author of the report, said the new analysis provides the most up-to-date picture of how pollutants contained in coal ash are leaching into the environment.
“Our report provides a unique, nationally comprehensive snapshot of the industry and it’s confirmed that virtually all coal plants are contaminating groundwater,” he said.
Regional Contamination
The report’s findings mirror those published last year by the Ohio Valley ReSource and member station WFPL. In Kentucky and West Virginia, every power plant covered under the EPA rules had coal ash waste sites with evidence of contaminated groundwater.
In some cases, the data showed levels of pollutants many times higher than the federal drinking water standards. For example, coal ash sites near West Virginia’s Pleasants Power Station had levels of the neurotoxin arsenic 16 times what the EPA deems safe. The radioactive and cancer-causing pollutant radium was found at levels six times higher than acceptable.
The groundwater data was collected close to the unlined coal ash pits and landfills. More testing is needed to determine to what extent those contaminants affect drinking water.
The report’s authors said in light of their findings, federal and state regulators must move to regulate all coal ash repositories and quickly.
However, the Trump administration has moved to weaken the 2015 coal ash rule. The EPA extended the deadline for utilities to stop using some coal ash ponds by more than a year, and has allowed utilities to assure regulators that leaking contaminants won’t get into groundwater. It is expected to release further changes to the rule this year.
For decades, Kentucky’s own coal stoked the fires that generated most of its electricity. And while some of those power plants have shut down or switched to natural gas, their legacy remains today in the leftover coal ash that’s stored all over the commonwealth.
Now, new data show the coal ash buried in landfills and submerged in ponds at many of these sites has contaminated local groundwater.
This new look at coal ash pollution comes from the power plants themselves; they were recently required to make public a first round of groundwater monitoring reports under new federal rules.
Those pollutants include known carcinogens like arsenic and radium.
Seven of the 14 sites covered under the EPA rules exceeded federal drinking water standards for arsenic. Tests at three sites showed radium levels above drinking water standards.
Environmental advocates say the first round of data demonstrates contamination is ubiquitous, not just in Kentucky, but at coal ash sites around the country.
“This is one of the things about the rule that has me bashing my head against the wall because everyone can look at the data and know that there’s contamination,” said Abel Russ with the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. “There’s unsafe levels of arsenic, unsafe levels of cobalt, lithium whatever it is. It’s as plain as day, but the way the rules are written, they don’t have to do anything about it yet.”
Industry representatives first informed Kentucky officials of the results at a meeting in May, said John Mura, spokesman for Kentucky’s Energy and Environment Cabinet. Representatives from six of the seven utilities covered under this rule have told the state they need to do additional testing — as outlined under EPA rules — before taking action.
“Based on the data we have, we have no indication that there is any imminent danger to human health at any of the sites right now,” Mura said.
Identifying The Threat
A year ago, it was clear that there was a problem near Big Rivers Electric Corporation’s Green Station in Henderson County. The station sits on the banks of the Green River. And directly underneath the plant’s massive coal ash landfill, the banks were leaching orange liquid.
Around the same time — June 2017 — state inspectors from the Division of Waste Management visited Green station’s landfill. In a letter sent to Big Rivers in January 2018, Solid Waste Branch Manager Danny Anderson summarized that trip’s findings: regulators found multiple places where contaminated water was flowing out of the landfill. Some of it was going into ditches, and some straight into the Green River.
“The available groundwater data and the presence of high-flow leachate outbreaks present at the facility indicate a significant potential threat to human health and the environment from this facility,” Anderson wrote.
These cases and others show the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection was already aware of potential problems at several power plants. But the new groundwater monitoring data, provided by the utilities themselves, suggests coal ash pollution is far more widespread.
WFPL News and OVR analyzed groundwater monitoring reports for all 14 power plants with coal ash waste sites covered under the EPA rules in Kentucky. For each site, reporters averaged the groundwater samples collected by utilities and compared them to background levels. This is a simplification of the complex statistical analyses used by utility companies.
Every power plant showed signs of contamination from multiple pollutants. In some cases, the chemicals found in the groundwater were exponentially higher than background levels.
Contamination Across The Commonwealth
Most of Kentucky’s coal ash sites were built in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Most are unlined — meaning there isn’t any sort of barrier between the coal ash and the soil.
Boron, sulfate and chloride are among the common contaminants. These chemicals are also sort of the “canaries in the coal mine” — the first contaminants to appear in the water column. Though it’s currently included on a list of less harmful pollutants, the EPA recently proposed reclassifying boron. In acute doses, it can cause rashes, nausea, ulcers, vomiting and diarrhea, according to the EPA.
But when it comes to the most harmful contaminants — carcinogens like arsenic and radium — there’s evidence they’re leaching into groundwater at multiple Kentucky sites.
At the Mill Creek Generating Station in Louisville, operated by Louisville Gas & Electric, the WFPL News analysis found monitoring wells that contained up to 40 times more arsenic than federal drinking water standards.
At the Paradise Fossil Plant, located on the Green River in Muhlenberg County, testing found levels of arsenic more than eight times higher than federal drinking water standards. That plant is owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority: a 2008 coal ash spill at the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant spilled more than a billion gallons of slurry onto nearby land and into waterways.
At Kentucky Utilities’ Ghent Generating Station north of Carrollton, radium levels at a groundwater well near the ash pond were 33 times the drinking water standard. In a well near the ash landfill, the radium levels were 10 times the standard. Tests done at Ghent also revealed elevated levels of arsenic, antimony and beryllium, among other contaminants.
Abel Russ said generally, the bigger the site, the more extensive the groundwater contamination. He has studied coal ash waste sites at several states around the country while working for the Environmental Integrity Project. From what Russ has seen, the signs of coal ash contamination in Kentucky are indicative of what’s happening around the country.
Click here to explore OVR's interactive coal ash map >>
“Basically anywhere you’ve buried coal ash in the ground without a good liner, it will have leaked into the groundwater, so I don’t think Kentucky is better or worse from that perspective,” Russ said.
Michael Winkler is the Environmental Program Manager for Louisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilities. He said the company has always known that water from unlined coal ash ponds can diffuse into the groundwater at sites like Mill Creek.
“So we’ve had [monitoring wells] that indicate different levels of metals in there, but again the groundwater flow has always been directly towards the river and all the river samples have indicated that’s always trace amounts, so we are not impacting any waters in such a way to cause a problem for human health,” Winkler said.
TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said the results are preliminary and do not mean there are issues with groundwater protection or impacts to drinking water.
“Under the [Coal Combustion Residual] rule it requires further study to evaluate and to characterize what is going on at each of those locations,” Brooks said.
Other utilities that spoke with WFPL News echoed that: the EPA designed the first round of testing to look for statistically significant increases of contaminants in groundwater. If contamination is found, the EPA rules require a second round of testing to validate the threat.
Already, six of the seven utilities in Kentucky that fall under EPA rules said they will do that additional testing after finding evidence of contamination.
But the preliminary nature of these initial results hasn’t stopped American Electric Power from notifying nearby communities that the groundwater around the Big Sandy Power Plant in Lawrence County could be contaminated.
“We wanted them to hear from us what the data was starting to show,” said John McManus, senior vice president of environmental services. “Particularly, as we talked about, for some of these parameters that have drinking water standards like arsenic.”
Threats To Surface Water
All of the testing so far has only looked at groundwater underneath the coal ash disposal sites and may not reflect the conditions farther away.
Abel Russ of the Environmental Integrity Project said if there is contamination, it’s most likely to affect private wells in communities near disposal sites.
“There’s no legal protection for those people, they are stuck with what they are drinking,” he said.
Depending on the flow of the groundwater, coal ash contamination could also affect surface water. These coal-fired power plants are typically next to rivers and large bodies of water; Russ said coal ash pollutants including mercury and selenium can build up in sediment and bio-accumulate in fish creating a hazard for entire food chains.
Credit Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection
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Pollution from the coal ash pond at the Brown power plant seeps into Herrington Lake.
And this problem of groundwater contamination compounds as you move downstream, said Tom FitzGerald of the Kentucky Resources Council.
“We as a nation, have developed an interesting way of utilizing our water resources, both as our toilet and our drinking sources,” FitzGerald said. “You have this legacy of all these ponds that are leaching levels of metals of concern that become part of the great background.”
The contamination is less of a threat to people who drink from treated water, said Mura, the state’s Energy and Environment Cabinet spokesman.
“Public drinking water sources are required to be treated prior to consumption in order to ensure that drinking water standards are complied with and human health protected,” Mura said.
State Response
The federal Environmental Protection Agency unveiled the new regulations for coal ash in 2015. The agency required utilities to comply, but didn’t create any mechanism to enforce the rules.
Instead, the agency left it up to the public to interpret the groundwater testing data and sue if they found evidence utilities were in violation.
Currently, the state has four field geologists that review groundwater monitoring data and about 60 inspectors who look at all types of waste facilities, including coal ash, state officials said.
Credit Kentucky Division of Waste Management
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Leachate seeping from a coal ash landfill at Big Rivers Electric Corporation’s Green Station in Henderson, Kentucky on June 6, 2017.
The law allows regulators to fine polluters up to $25,000 per day in penalties, but the state often works with utilities to solve violations before they are issued.
“It’s often more important to get things fixed than to collect fines,” Mura said.
Right now, only two Kentucky coal ash sites are working through state-mandated corrective action: Big Rivers’ D.B. Wilson Power Plant in Western Kentucky and Kentucky Utilities’ E.W. Brown Generation Station near Danville. Coal ash pollution at both sites were the subject of WFPL News investigations last year.
Kentucky Spokesman John Mura said the state will enforce federal regulations as required.
“The Cabinet has the necessary tools at our disposal to address the issues, including inspections, agreed orders, administrative hearings,” he said.
He said because of this first round of testing, and early indications that the state’s utilities won’t meet federal standards, the Energy and Environment Cabinet has set up meetings with utilities to review current data and proactively address any problems.
What’s Next
Following the second round of testing, every coal ash site that is leaking will have to retrofit or close, according to EPA rules.
Utilities can choose to enclose the ash in place or remove it. If they close in place, the utility has to remove the water, install a cover and monitor the groundwater for at least 30 years.
“The whole idea of the contamination is that it’s kind of like a tea bag in a pond and it’s steeping out,” said Winkler, LG&E’s environmental programs manager.
Dry storage and cap systems will help prevent groundwater pollution, he said.
At least four of Kentucky’s largest utilities have already committed to closing their ash ponds and moving to dry storage, including Louisville Gas & Electric/Kentucky Utilities, Duke Energy, American Electric Power and Tennessee Valley Authority.
But the rules could change. In March, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt signed the first of two rules that would amend current coal ash regulations.
The proposal would allow states to ignore federal regulations and adopt their own standards, rules, remedies and in some cases, suspend groundwater monitoring all together.
This story is the second part of the Coal Ash Uncovered series. Read part one here >>
For generations, coal power has fueled American prosperity. But for each shovelful thrown into the furnaces, a pile of ash was left in its place.
Today, as coal’s dominance in the power sector wanes, those piles of ash have grown into mountains as coal ash became one of the largest waste streams in the country, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Hundreds of waste ponds and landfills, many constructed without liners to prevent leaks, dot the American landscape, especially in the coal-rich Ohio Valley. And the ash they contain includes the concentrated remains of the many toxic compounds associated with coal and its combustion, such as arsenic, lead, and radium.
The Ohio Valley ReSource and partner station WFPL analyzed newly available data from groundwater monitoring wells near ash disposal sites in the region and found that most show signs of leaking contaminants. At several sites, hazardous compounds are found in groundwater at levels that far exceed federal drinking water standards.
Click here to explore OVR's interactive coal ash map >>
The new data come just as the Trump administration is proposing major changes to rules regarding the storage of ash waste and the future regulation of the waste sites.
Leaching Waste
The EPA has long struggled to regulate coal ash disposal sites, but spurred by the disastrous failure of a coal ash pond in Tennessee, the Obama administration’s EPA approved a compromise rule in 2015. The rule required utilities to conduct extensive groundwater monitoring around coal ash waste sites and set thresholds for closure of ponds or landfills found to be leaking contaminants.
Credit Brittany Patterson / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Curt and Debbie Havens lived near Little Blue Run, the country’s largest coal ash waste site.
What the first round of monitoring data revealed is a toxic blend of coal ash chemicals that appear to be leaching into groundwater across the country.
Environmental advocates say the data demonstrate that contamination is ubiquitous, not just in the Ohio Valley but at coal ash sites around the United States.
Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law center, found 92 percent of sites showed evidence of contamination in a review of 100 sites across the country.
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Read about how we worked with the data >>
“And this is industry produced data,” Lisa Evans, an attorney with Earthjustice, emphasized. “Data is showing us that across the board there was groundwater contamination at almost every site in the country,” she said.
Utilities say the results are preliminary. EPA rules require a second round of testing to validate and characterize the threat before they’re required to take corrective action.
“It’s very important to note that the groundwater monitoring wells for the federal coal ash rule are immediately next to our basin or landfill, so these results do not reflect groundwater conditions farther away or off plant property where neighbors are located,” said Bill Norton, a spokesman for Duke Energy.
Troubling Data
In Kentucky and West Virginia, every power plant covered under the EPA rules had coal ash waste sites with evidence of contaminated groundwater, according to the analysis by WFPL and the Ohio Valley ReSource.
Already, three sites in Ohio, four sites in West Virginia and 11 sites in Kentucky have said they will do more testing after finding evidence of possible groundwater contamination.
Credit Erica Peterson / WFPL
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WFPL
Louisville Gas & Electric’s Mill Creek Power Station
In southwest Louisville, Louisville Gas & Electric’s largest coal-fired power plant, Mill Creek Generating Station, sits along the Ohio River. The river is also a source of drinking water for more than five million people in the region.
Mill Creek Generating Station’s groundwater data show levels of arsenic — a known carcinogen — more than 40 times higher than national drinking water standards, according to the analysis. The utility is not alone. Many others have high arsenic levels in the groundwater data, including at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s iconic Paradise Fossil Plant in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.
In West Virginia’s northern panhandle, along the Pennsylvania border, another community is dealing with the consequences of living with the largest coal ash waste site in the country.
Residents talk of a coal ash “lake” that once glowed blue, that gives rise to an unbearable stench, and sometimes seeped liquid coal ash waste into their backyards.
The Series
In this series, we’ll explore the extent of the contamination in the region based on the first round of groundwater testing, hear from community members who live next to the waste, and consider the Trump administration’s proposal that could change how the sites are regulated and who regulates them.
