Fact Sheet
Coal Combustion Waste
Coal combustion waste–the leftovers from burning coal–is piling up in unregulated and unmonitored landfills, pits and ponds, and mines across the United States and the world. Coal combustion waste is made up of coal bottom ash, fly ash, boiler slag and sludge from air pollution controls. It contains sulfur, nitrogen, heavy metals and radioactive compounds that are concentrated into ash when the hydrocarbons burn away. Some coal ash also contains PCBs, vanadium and other hazardous compounds from power plants that burn shredded cars, oil combustion waste, railroad ties and other materials. The National Academies of Science identified 24 potentially hazardous metals in coal ash, including arsenic, boron, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, radium and selenium. Fly ash in particular contains hazardous polyaromatic hydrocarbons like naphthalene, acenaphthyene, anthracene, dibenzofuran, fluorine and fluoranthene. Radioactive compounds like uranium and thorium are found in coal combustion waste at levels 10 times greater than coal before it is burned and the fly ash emitted by a coal-fired power plant carries 100 times more radiation into the environment than a nuclear power plant generating the same amount of energy.
Ash and other coal combustion waste can run off or leach from improper storage–polluting surface waters, contaminating aquifers and drinking water and poisoning wildlife. In 2007, the U.S. EPA found that unlined coal ash waste ponds pose a cancer risk 900 times above “acceptable” levels. They also confirmed 24 “proven” cases of environmental contamination in 13 states by coal ash, more than twice the numbers they found in 2000. They found another 39 cases of potential harm in 17 states. Pollution from ash ponds continues long after they are closed–the U.S. EPA reports peak pollution exposures occur 78 to 105 years after ponds are first opened.
Exposure to coal combustion waste can cause cancer, gastrointestinal illnesses, reproductive problems and birth defects. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that residents who live near unlined coal ash ponds and rely on well water have as much as a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from arsenic exposure–a cancer rate more than 2000 times the Agency’s regulatory goals. The cancer risks associated with exposure to coal combustion waste are equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, breathing air with a radon concentration 20 times the level considered safe or consuming water contaminated with vinyl chloride at 20 times the acceptable risk level and 10 times the U.S. EPA maximum contaminant level.
The ecological risks from coal combustion waste are equally harmful. Toxins can build up in river and lake bottoms, poisoning plants and the entire food web. The concentrations of arsenic and selenium are 10 times higher, the concentration of lead 20 times higher and the concentration of boron 2000 times higher than levels considered safe for birds, frogs and fish and ecosystems. The Center for Public Integrity reports that some U.S. EPA scientists believe that more recent toxicity data could double these results. Coal combustion waste is the second largest industrial waste stream in the U.S., surpassed only by mining waste. American coal-fired power plants generate 129 million tons of solid waste every year–enough to fill a million railroad cars, creating a train that would stretch between Washington, D.C., and Melbourne, Australia. Some coal combustion waste is recycled into concrete, wallboard and roofing materials; used as structural fill or road base; or used as a soil amendment or for snow and ice control. But the majority of it is stockpiled in landfills or dumped in unlined ponds and in mines.
About 20 percent of all coal combustion waste, or about 25 million tons each year, is dumped into active or abandoned mines, a practice called minefilling. Many states claim minefilling is a “beneficial use” because the alkaline coal combustion waste will neutralize acidic mine drainage. But studies show that even if the runoff is neutralized briefly, the ash cannot buffer the acidity for long periods of time and the acidity can actually increase over time. The acidic conditions promote the leaching of metals and other toxins from the waste–in more severe and long-term contamination than what existed before the waste was dumped into the mine. And since mines are riddled with fractures that allow groundwater to migrate through the mine and come into contact with additional pollution, the risk of drinking water contamination–and associated cancers and other diseases–increases. Studies in Pennsylvania show that two-thirds of the sites examined showed more severe pollution, with some sites moving from background levels of contamination to levels exceeding federal drinking water standards by hundreds or thousands of times.
The “beneficial use” classification exempts coal combustion waste from all solid waste regulations in many states, making household trash more highly regulated than coal combustion waste. Household landfills are required by law to have impervious liners made from compacted clay or geosynthetic materials and must be located above the water table — but not so for coal combustion waste. Mine-fills are often enormous, making leak detection and mitigation extremely difficult. The Springdale Mine Pit in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, is 3,000 feet long and 1,500 feet wide and could accommodate up to 59 million tons of coal combustion waste with little required groundwater monitoring. The Champion Coal Refuse Disposal Site in western Pennsylvania can accommodate up to 87 million tons, despite being surrounded by private drinking water wells.
Even though EPA promised in 2000 to require safeguards for coal ash disposal, the U.S. government still does not regulate coal combustion waste as hazardous nor does it set standards for its safe handling, storage or monitoring. Instead, states craft their own regulations, with at least 20 percent of states exempting some or all coal ash from solid waste regulations despite the clear and present danger coal combustion waste poses to ecological and public health. The lack of federal standards encourages the cheapest rather than the soundest disposal measures and penalizes both power companies who manage their combustion wastes properly and taxpayers who must pay to clean up contamination and for new drinking water supplies.
Failure to consistently regulate coal combustion waste has led to the catastrophic environmental and public health disasters like the ones we’ve seen recently in Tennessee, Alabama and Maryland–the largest of which was at Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee. On December 22, 2008, a dam at Tennessee Valley Authority’s 54-year old Kingston coal-fired power plant gave way, sending a tidal wave of over a billion gallons of toxic coal ash slurry into the Clinch and Emory Rivers. In a matter of seconds, 300 acres were covered with a 4-foot layer of black and gray sludge. The toxic slurry destroyed homes, power lines, and roads; ruptured a major gas line; poisoned drinking water supplies; and caused a massive fish kill. A wave of ash and water covered 12 homes, rendering 3 completely uninhabitable and pushing 1 house completely off its foundation, caused damage to 42 homes and necessitated the evacuation from 22. The spill was 100 times larger than the Exxon Valdez disaster. The 60-foot earthen dam, which had known structural deficiencies, held back at least a decade’s worth of pollutants, but it is estimated that just a single year’s worth of coal waste at the Kingston plant contained 45,000 pounds of arsenic, 49,000 pounds of lead, 1.4 million pounds of barium, 91,000 pounds of chromium, and 140,000 pounds of manganese. The facility emits approximately 6,857,133 pounds of toxins to air, water and land each year. The plant, with nine generating units, did not shut down after the spill. The plant burns about five million tons of coal to produce 10 billion kilowatt hours of electricity each year, enough to power 700,000 homes.
Additionally, it is worth noting that the TVA is a federally controlled corporation, created by congressional charter in 1933 to provide flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing and economic development to parts of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia after the Great Depression. It is the largest regional planning agency of the federal government and the largest public utility in the U.S. with 47 hydroelectric, 18 fossil fuel, 6 combustion turbine, and 3 nuclear power plants. The TVA also operates small-scale solar, wind and methane facilities.
In light of the most recent coal ash spills, the U.S. Administration under President Obama says it will regulate coal combustion waste by the end of 2009. However, classifying coal combustion waste as hazardous is likely to be an uphill battle considering the influence of the coal industry, a 30-year history of attempting but failing to regulate coal combustion waste and the Bevill Amendment, passed by Congress in 1980, which institutionalizes hurdles in the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act for specifically classifying coal ash as hazardous. But without clear, enforceable nationwide regulations, coal combustion waste will continue to threaten water quality and communities.
References
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Resources - Tennessee Valley Authority Ash Spill: Kingston Fossil Plant, Tennessee (22 December 2008)
Video: Assignment Earth coverage of the Tennessee Valley coal waste spill. 22 January 2009.
Video: Waterkeepers record condition of Clinch and Emory Rivers after ash spill.30 December 2008.
Sandra Diaz, National Field Coordinator for Appalachian Voices, Hurricane Creekeeper John Wathen, and Upper Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby paddle up the Clinch and Emory Rivers to record the conditions after a 5.4 million cubic yard spill of coal waste from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Coal Plant.
Video: Hurricane Creekkeeper recaps one of the worst environmental disasters.
28 December 2008.
John Wathen, Hurricane Creekkeeper, gives a recap of one of the worst environmental disasters in American history, with a look at the tactics used by the TVA police to hinder, rather than help, efforts to bring information to light on the devastation.
Video: Monitoring on the devastated Emory River. 11 January 2009.
Tennessee Aquarium, Appalachian State University and Watauga Riverkeeper staff members collect water and fish samples from the Emory River on January 8th and 9th, 2009 where 5.4 million cubic yards of coal combustion waste spilled from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Coal Plant.
Video: Monitoring results from the TVA ash spill — Part 1 and Part 2. 1 January 2009.
Interview with Dr. Shea R. Tuberty and Dr. Carol Babyak concerning the test results of water samples taken the Kingston Fossil Plant area on December 27, 2008, five days after the coal ash spill.
Video: Flyovers of the TVA Kingston and Widows Creek coal ash spills. 13 January 2009.
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Resources - Tennessee Valley Authority Ash Spill: Widows Creek Fossil Plant, Alabama (9 January 2009)
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