Comment: The EPA is not enforcing the Clean Water Act and not many changes in Coal Ash Regulations in 2 years. Also notice in the Chart that Virginia will not support controlling coal ash so will Virginia be weak on Uranium Tailings Holding Ponds....I think so! Profit before health of people!
By Sue SturgisDec. 22, 2010
Today marks two years since a coal ash impoundment collapsed at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee, sending a billion-gallon tidal wave of toxic waste into a nearby community and rivers.
The disaster also pushed the issue of coal ash regulation into the public policy spotlight, with incoming Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson vowing to replace the existing patchwork of weak state regulations with federal rules to prevent a similar disaster in the future.
But on the second anniversary of the Kingston spill, the American public is still waiting for federal protections from the hazards of coal ash -- with no idea when those might be in place.
This week the EPA released its upcoming regulatory agenda, which addresses the final rulemaking for coal ash. The agenda classes the coal ash rule as a "long-term action," with the date of the final release "to be determined."
"We are two years out from this environmental disaster with no certainty on when the final rules will be published," said Lisa Evans, an attorney with the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice. "We don't think this is a good place to be."
Following the Kingston disaster, EPA set out to count the number of coal ash dumps, tallying more than 600 impoundments and similar units at coal-fired power plants nationwide. More than half of those that have been rated are classed as high or significant hazards, meaning a failure could kill people or cause extensive property damage.
But coal ash doesn't present a hazard only when impoundments collapse: It's been linked to 137 cases of environmental contamination in 34 states, with impoundments and other dumpsites leaching toxins to groundwater.
An EPA risk assessment [pdf] found that people who live near coal ash impoundments and drink from wells have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer due to arsenic contamination -- 1,800 times EPA's regulatory limit. Coal ash also contains other toxins including lead, thallium and radioactive elements.
In May of this year, after a long delay and heavy lobbying by industry interests, the agency took the unusual step of releasing not one but two proposals for regulating coal ash.
The stricter version favored by public health and environmental advocates would regulate coal ash as a special waste under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, which governs hazardous waste. The other option embraced by the utility industry would treat coal ash like ordinary solid waste under RCRA Subtitle D.
Under the stricter Subtitle C option, EPA has enforcement authority and the regulations are mandatory in every state. But under the weaker Subtitle D approach, EPA would issue "guidelines" that are not federally enforceable -- and that states may choose not to adopt.
A recent EPA analysis identified 30 states that it predicts would not adopt the federal guidelines as law -- including disaster-stricken Tennessee.
The following chart taken from comments on the proposed rules [pdf] by an alliance of environmental groups lists the coal-ash generating states that EPA expects would and would not adopt Subtitle D guidelines:
The choice between Subtitle C and D also has significant environmental justice implications, since an analysis by the same environmental organizations found that communities near coal plants in the states that are not expected to implement the Subtitle D guidelines are more likely to be impoverished, non-white and to have a larger-than-average child population.
"In other words," the groups noted in their comments, "a weak EPA rule would apply new safeguards for coal ash regulation in states where coal ash presents a relatively small, or even non-existent, environmental justice problem, while failing to add protections in states where environmental justice communities are heavily impacted by coal ash disposal."
Read more:
http://www.southernstudies.org/2010/12/two-years-after-tennessee-coal-ash-disaster-still-waiting-for-federal-oversight.html
