EPA Story Archives - Page 14 of 15 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

EPA Brownfields Program Stirs W.Va. Interest

Localities across West Virginia are seeking a share of more than $3 million in assessment and clean-up grants through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Northern West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center reports that 11 applications totaling $3.2 million were submitted for funding, according to The State Journal.

The center’s executive director, Patrick Kirby, said the so-called brownfields applications will compete nationally for funding to remedy environmental concerns.

The program helps communities conduct environmental assessments of properties, review cleanup options, and start cleanup at contaminated sites.

This year, the EPA picked five West Virginia projects to receive $1 million in brownfields grants.

Feds Approve Cleanup Plan for Allegany Ballistics Laboratory

The cleanup of toxic waste at a military ballistics laboratory in Mineral County is expected to cost more than $10 million.

The Cumberland Times-News reports that federal authorities have approved the cleanup and maintenance of more than 13 acres at Allegany Ballistics Laboratory in Rocket Center.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says toxins in the soil at the facility’s Northern Riverside Waste Disposal Area include metals, explosives, dioxins and volatile organic compounds.

The lab tests munitions and portions of munitions. It previously was operated by the Navy, which now contracts the work to ABL.

A final record of decision prepared for the Mid-Atlantic Naval Facilities Engineering Command says future development of land outside an active burning area will be limited.

EPA Rules on Coal Ash

The Obama administration has set the first national standards for waste generated from coal burned for electricity. The regulation treats it more like…

The Obama administration has set the first national standards for waste generated from coal burned for electricity. The regulation treats it more like household garbage rather than a hazardous material.

Environmentalists had pushed for the hazardous classification, citing the hundreds of cases nationwide where coal ash waste had tainted waters. The coal industry wanted the less stringent classification.

The rule ends a six-year effort that began after a massive spill at a power plant in Tennessee.

The EPA said that the regulation addresses the risks posed by coal ash sites and that the record did not support a hazardous classification.

The rule does not require all sites failing to meet the standards to close. Sites at shuttered power plants also are not covered.

Italian Company Could Change the Way W.Va. Looks at Waste

Landfilling has been the main source of getting rid of waste for centuries. But a new technology coming to West Virginia may change how we think of waste disposal, and in the long run, help our environment.

Entsorga is an Italian resource recovery company that has been around since 1997. About four years ago, the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority was looking for ways to promote a cleaner environment and find a safer and more efficient way to dispose of waste. …Entsorga ended up finding them.

After three years of waiting, Entsorga received approval from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to begin constructing a new resource recovery facility later this year on property owned by the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority. The facility will take anywhere from 65 to 75 percent of the refuse they collect and turn it into fuel instead of putting it in the ground.

“Essentially what you take waste, and you use it as a resource or you use to make energy,” said Clint Hogbin, the chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, “This is garbage that will be picked up on the street, no differently then it’s being picked up today. And instead of the truck going to a landfill, the truck will go to a 4 acre building, and unload its waste inside of a building, where mechanical equipment, electro-mechanical equipment will sort and process that waste and prepare it to be used for fuel.”

The Berkeley County facility will be the first Entsorga plant in the country and the first resource recovery facility in West Virginia using a technology called HeBIOT.

Acreage just behind the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s main office. The Entsorga facility will be built just beyond this fence.

“HeBIOT is an acronym. It stands for high-efficiency biological treatment, and it’s a patented technology, patent by Entsorga,” Hogbin said, “It uses the biology of waste if you will, the decomposition of waste, to prepare the waste to be used for a fuel.”

Hogbin says while there are other resource recovery facilities in the United States, this facility is the only one that will use the HeBIOT technology. The waste is turned into a confetti-like material by use of high-tech machines operated by humans within a clean room. The material is then dried and can be burned for fuel and used as a replacement for some non-renewable resources like coal. And that’s what Hogbin says may keep the state from embracing the new fueling system.

“We were worried about there being some concern, particularly from downstate, about the impact on coal, because this would be competing with coal,” Hogbin noted.

With the push from the federal government to reduce carbon emission, however, Hogbin says recycling refuse is a viable option for not just West Virginia, but the entire country.

Clint Hogbin, chairman of the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority, stands in the field soon to be under construction.

“Emissions from burning of this material has been studied. It’s been studied by Entsorga. It’s also been studied by the United States Environmental Protection Agency who literally sent this board a letter, advising us their opinion of burning this material was significantly lower or equal to the emissions of burning coal.”

Entsorga has an agreement with another Italian company called Essroc, also located in Berkeley County. The confetti-like material produced at the Entsorga plant, will be sent to Essroc, where this fuel will be used to power the plant that makes cement.

Apple Valley Waste Services will also play a role by providing Entsorga with the garbage it will use to make the fuel.

Hogbin says once the Entsorga facility is up-and-running, it would employ around 12 people, with salaries ranging from forty to sixty-thousand dollars a year.

Some Say West Virginia Can Survive the New EPA Regulations

West Virginia can actually thrive under new U.S. Environmental Protection Regulations that aim to reduce greenhouse gasses, according to three panelists participating in a public forum last week in Shepherdstown.

West Virginia must cut back its carbon emission rate by 20 percent by the year 2030 under the EPA regulations. The panelists leading the forum, entitled EPA Carbon Rules: How Can West Virginia Lead? voiced confidence that the state can meet that goal and create jobs as well. The West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club organized the event. Jefferson County resident Mary Anne Hitt is director of the organization’s Beyond Coal Campaign

“There is a lot of misinformation out there about this rule, and what it requires of coal or gas or energy efficiency,” Hitt noted, “and the fact of the matter is, here in West Virginia, we can meet the standard through energy efficiency, through wind and solar. Through clean energy that’s going to provide a lot of new jobs in the state, and it’s a really exciting opportunity, and we all know that we’re struggling with low employment here in West Virginia, and we need more economic opportunity, and this is a great way to bring it to the state.”

Aside from Hitt, two other panelists seemed to get the most reaction from the audience. One was David Levine who is a leader in the West Virginia solar industry. Levine is founder and CEO of the company Geosteller Solar which is based in Martinsburg.

“This regulation is not job killing regulation,” said Levine, “It really is going to spur a whole new energy economy, which is really good for consumers, and that’s actually going to lower their utility bills, and it’s going to spur jobs, because solar creates many more jobs per Megawatt than big centralized nuclear power plants or coal plants, or natural gas power plants.”

Levine says that the installation process is frighteningly simple.

“Our business is solar energy marketplace, and the idea is we match people who want to go solar with the right solutions. We tell you exactly how much energy you can produce on your particular rooftop, and then the value of that energy based on the energy you’ll displace. So if I used to have a monthly energy bill of $120 a month, it says your new total electricity cost with your solar, plus what you’ll still paying your utility company for a reduced usage might be down to $80 a month, and that’s what we compare.”

Levine says once Geostellar Solar does a site assessment of your home, it takes a licensed contractor about a day to install the panels. But if it’s so easy, why aren’t more people taking advantage of it?

“The reason people aren’t going solar today is because they don’t have role models, where it’s still so sparse, there’s not a sense of oh, it’s common. It’s hard to say when the tipping point is going to be, it’s like the movement from the horseless carriage to the automobile. You know, cars were foreign, it was like, how can this possibly move without this horse. It’s going to be the same thing at some point. People aren’t going to talk about solar energy, it’s just going to be energy.”

Marketing Consultant and Jefferson County resident Sean O’Leary, says the numbers involving jobs in coal just don’t add up.

“From the time West Virginia hit its peak in employment in 1940 with about 130,000 jobs, we have dropped down to only about 19,000 jobs now,” explained O’Leary, “but in the meantime, the extraction of coal has actually increased. The bottom line is that employment in the coal industry has not ever, at least since 1929, been driven by the volume of coal that’s being extracted, and so consequently when politicians say that by defending the industry and increasing the…helping to increase the use of coal, they’re defending West Virginia jobs, it simply isn’t true.”

The conversation about how the new EPA regulations will impact the country will continue at a public hearing in Washington DC on July 29^th. The Sierra Club is sponsoring a bus to take Eastern Panhandle residents who are interested in attending.

Harvard/Syracuse Study: West Virginia Among Those to Benefit Most from Proposed Carbon Regulations

The Harvard School of Public Health together with Syracuse University released a study of potential air quality benefits based on the first-of-their-kind carbon dioxide emissions reduction proposal the Environmental Protection Agency revealed this month. According to researchers, West Virginia is among the state’s to benefit most from the proposed rules.

When President Obama announced a year ago that there would be a program to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, Syracuse University professor of civil and environmental engineering Charles Driscoll started compiling several different policy options that the EPA would likely pursue. From there he worked to predict how such policies would compare considering co-benefits of reductions in power plant emissions.

“The overall objective is to reduce carbon emissions from power plants,” Driscoll said, “but associated with fossil fuel emissions, there are other air pollutants that are released such as sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxide, which contributes to ozone; and then some of these pollutants not only have health effects, but also have effects on ecosystems.”

Key Findings

A strong carbon standard would decrease the emissions of multiple other pollutants that are harmful to people and the environment (e.g., SO2, NO x).
As a result of lower emissions, states would experience improved air quality (e.g., fine particles) and less “atmospheric deposition” of pollution (e.g., acid rain). All states would see benefits, with the greatest average improvements in: OH, PA, MD, WV, IL, KY, MO, IN, CO, AL, AR, DE.
A weaker standard limited to power plant retrofits “inside the fence line” would bring little if any additional air quality benefits for states.
The results of our analysis suggest that the stronger the standards (in terms of both stringency and flexibility), the greater and more widespread the added benefits will be for people and the environment.

Health Benefits

In a 2014 report released by the American Lung Association, data indicates that while air pollution in West Virginia’s metropolitan areas has generally improved, there’s more ozone, or smog, in every country where it was measured. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection corroborates that, indicating that especially in northern counties like Marshall and Brooke, sulfur dioxide continues to be a problem because of proximity to power plants and other large industrial sources.

Health risks associated with air pollution include not only respiratory problems, but also cardiovascular, neurological, and developmental, just to name a few. Driscoll’s report has mapped out how much and where pollution levels are most likely to improve.

“So depending on how the policy is implemented, there could be substantial benefits for air quality, and certainly West Virginia falls into that category; there would be large benefits for West Virginia,” Driscoll said.

The same researchers are also planning to release a subsequent report later this summer that aims to quantify specific health benefits as well as associated cost savings.