A debate over fly ash disposal

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10350/1109210-114.stm

A debate over fly ash disposal

Thursday, December 16, 2010
By David Templeton and Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Piles of fly ash sit atop a hill at the Matt Canestrale Contracting Inc. disposal site in La Belle, Fayette County.

Before Penn Power created Little Blue Lake in 1975, the company circulated fliers advertising a picturesque recreation area where people could boat and ski on blue waters.

So 35 years later, where are all the boats and skiers?

And, for that matter, where’s the lake?

The so-called “lake” in Beaver County’s Greene Township, near the boroughs of Georgetown and Hookstown, was created as a disposal pit for calcium sulfate and fly ash generated at the 2,390-megawatt Bruce Mansfield Power Plant in nearby Shippingport.

Today it looks like moonscape.

Coal waste, 400 feet deep and even deeper, extends across the state line into West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle and covers about 1,000 acres on a site that is 2 square miles. The 100 million tons of waste includes 60 million tons of calcium sulfate — generated by the scrubbing process to remove sulfur dioxide from smokestack emissions — and 40 million tons of fly ash, which is a byproduct of the coal-burning process to produce electricity.

The only sign of life on a late-summer day was a flock of Canada geese walking — not swimming — across the weird surface.

As one of the nation’s largest coal-waste disposal sites, Little Blue is a centerpiece of a nationwide debate about the safety of such impoundments and whether fly ash should be designated as hazardous waste.

Heavy metals in fly ash, including arsenic, lead, mercury, cobalt and thallium, should be designated as hazardous, environmental groups say.

But the power industry says such a designation will hinder beneficial uses for fly ash, including in concrete. Calcium sulfate is used in wallboard, but its dust can irritate eyes, skin, mucous membranes and the upper respiratory tract. Dust periodically has been a concern at the site.

Critics question whether the millions of tons can remain sealed on site or if their heavy metals leach into groundwater and damage the environment and public health.

The more immediate debate centers on whether leaching already has begun.

Site owner FirstEnergy Corp., based in Akron, Ohio, says its “first of its kind” disposal site is safe. Up to 3.2 million gallons of sludge are sent daily to the site through seven miles of overland pipes.

“It’s been operating for 34 or 35 years safely with all the structural integrity it is designed to have,” said Ellen Raines, spokeswoman for FirstEnergy, which always has owned Little Blue but previously under the name Penn Power.

The state Department of Environmental Protection supports that conclusion.

“Coal-ash facilities in the region have to manage the waste, so they figure out how much waste they have and how long they can use the site and how to plan for continued disposal,” said Diane McDaniel, DEP facilities chief for waste management. “It’s nothing unusual.”

But the Environmental Integrity Project, working on behalf of concerned Greene Township residents, says Little Blue already is posing risks to the environment and residents’ health.

Lisa Graves Marcucci, an Integrity Project official who’s been studying Little Blue for years, points to problems she says the company and DEP have refused to remedy them.

“[FirstEnergy has] 10 of 69 monitoring wells on site showing elevated spikes for arsenic — and that’s as recent as the first and second quarters of this year,” she said. “The monitoring wells are the sentinels that say there’s a problem at the site, and if not addressed, will leave the site.”

A report issued by the Integrity Project, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice in September says 39 coal-ash dump sites in 21 states, including Little Blue, “are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.”

The report also says state governments aren’t adequately monitoring the sites and encourages the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enact new regulations designating fly ash as a hazardous waste to protect the public.

Every coal-ash site equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, it says, has concentrations of heavy metals — arsenic and lead included — that exceed federal drinking-water standards.

But Jeff Smith, a DEP geologist and expert on Little Blue Run and the disposal site, said quarterly data from monitoring wells at and surrounding the impoundment reveal no excess levels of primary contaminants. “That has been proven with the data and in all the residential samples I’ve collected,” he said.

Sporadic elevations in arsenic levels in 2009 and 2010 were traced to fertilizer FirstEnergy was using to plant grass over areas of the impoundment. Arsenic levels declined once the company changed fertilizers, Mr. Smith said.

In the 1970s, Penn Power built its earthen dam across Little Blue Run near the point where it enters the Ohio River, just north of Chester, W.Va., and across the river from East Liverpool, Ohio.

Initially, the company thought coal waste would sink to the lake bottom and harden into low-grade concrete, leaving the surface pristine and available for recreation. But it soon became apparent that the lake never could be open to the public, Ms. Raines said.

The entire disposal site now is encircled by a chain-link fence.

Unregulated waste
The American Coal Ash Association, which promotes beneficial uses for coal-combustion products, said the United States in 2007 produced 131 million tons of such materials, of which 75 million tons not used in concrete and other products had to be disposed of in 1,300 fly-ash dumps nationwide.

Most are not monitored or regulated.

Recent collapses of waste-impoundments display potential for health and environmental consequences when such systems fail.

The wall of a large impoundment of red sludge at the Hungarian Aluminum Production and Trade Co. collapsed Oct. 4 and sent the sludge flowing through a Hungarian town. Nine people died.

Fly-ash disposal became a domestic concern on Dec. 22, 2008, when a disposal cell at the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee collapsed and released 5.4 million cubic yards of ash slurry (ash mixed with water) onto 300 acres, polluting nearby Emory and Clinch rivers in the process.

A neighborhood had to be evacuated due to heavy-metal contamination and three homes were destroyed by the wave of water and ash.

Although soil samples contained arsenic, cobalt, iron and thallium levels that exceeded “residential Superfund soil-screening values,” the EPA ultimately ruled that the waste was not hazardous.

But the collapses have spawned fresh concern about Little Blue.

The dam, standing 400 feet high, looms over the Ohio River and represents that largest earthen dam in the eastern United States. In 2009 the EPA designated that the dam has “High Hazard Potential,” which means failure would lead to loss of life.

Ms. Raines of FirstEnergy said the dam’s height alone was reason for EPA’s hazard rating. She said the dam is safe: “It is inspected by our contractors twice a year and by DEP once a year.”

The dam, built with 9 million cubic yards of rock, has a base 1,300-feet thick and a top that’s 2,200 feet across, or about two-fifths of a mile. No one lives in the area between the dam and the Ohio River, Ms. Raines said.

Monitors are built into the dam to detect any movement. “This is not something taken lightly,” she said. “Safety has been the emphasis from the beginning.”

But Ms. Graves Marcucci said water seeps through the dam from the impoundment. But seepage is an expected consequence of the dam’s design, FirstEnergy said, noting that it collects the water and pumps it back into the impoundment.

Because the lake is full, the company has been filling sausage-shaped “geotubes” with dry waste since 2006 and stacking them atop the lake. FirstEnergy anticipates using Little Blue for five to eight more years. In time, it will be covered with mulch to promote vegetation growth. Only time will tell if the 1,300-acre impoundment can ever be used for anything other than a disposal pit.

“Keep in mind that this is a cement-like substance that hardens to a low-grade concrete” due to the presence of calcium sulfate, Ms. Raines said. “It dries up and sets. The situation in Tennessee was wet fly ash. That’s not the situation in Little Blue.”

DEP’s Mr. Smith said Little Blue’s white semi-solid surface is like putty; it’s not low-grade concrete but more substantial than a gel. The putty-like substance would help prevent heavy metals from leaching, he said.

Ms. Raines said FirstEnergy has tested well water on residential properties 70 times without discovering problems that can be traced to the impoundment.

But Ms. Graves Marcucci said the 100 million tons of sludge is pressing down on aquifers, creating pressure that potentially could cause heavy metals to leach into groundwater. Greene Township residents have no access to public water and rely on wells.

A University of Pittsburgh study, led by Conrad Dan Volz from Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, is studying water quality in Greene Township but results are not yet available.

Neighbors’ concerns
West Virginians living near the impoundment face their own set of problems. Water has begun seeping from hillsides surrounding the impoundment, raising fears that water from Little Blue could be moving off site.

One woman’s sloping lawn is rolling up like carpeting due to hillside seepage.

Two other people have thyroid and respiratory illnesses they link to exposure to the impoundment over the hill from their home. They say a FirstEnergy official advised them against eating vegetables from their backyard garden, but company officials said no such advisory was ever issued.

At the home of John Reed Jr. within 1,000 yards of Little Blue, FirstEnergy’s water-well testing showed arsenic levels above safe drinking water limits. The company and DEP confirmed the high levels in one reading, but attributed it to a bad well casing that allowed the natural arsenic from soil to infiltrate the well.

DEP officials said seeps from the hillsides around the impoundment are under investigation.

Mark Durbin, a FirstEnergy spokesman, said the seep issue is “something we’re aware of and have discussed with residents. “We are hoping to move soon to take care of it,” he said.

Another concern is FirstEnergy’s proposal to build a new dry-waste disposal site with a double clay liner in Greene Township. FirstEnergy already owns 23 percent of the township, and supervisors said they don’t want another waste dump.

Health link?
Ultimately, the issue focuses on whether health impacts can be linked to Little Blue. Residents have done informal health surveys that have scared them.

“We seem to have a high rate of cancer,” said Sandra Wright, Greene Township secretary-treasurer. “On any road you have two or three people living with cancer daily.”

The township wants air monitors to determine the extent of air pollution from local and downwind sources. It also is awaiting results from the Pitt study before deciding on a next step.

The Post-Gazette’s ecological study of mortality rates for heart and respiratory disease and lung cancer shows elevated rates for the combined area of Greene Township, Hookstown and Georgetown.

Heart disease deaths there were 46 percent higher than the national rate. The total of 88 deaths from all three diseases is 42 percent higher than the predicted number of 62 deaths, based on national rates.

Scientific studies say these diseases can be linked to air pollution, but there are no studies suggesting a direct link to heavy-metal or fly-ash exposure.

David Templeton: dtempleton@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1578. Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.

First published on December 16, 2010 at 12:00 am