Coal's time bomb

Every year, South Carolina's power plants burn enough coal to fill 10 large football stadiums, leaving behind a stadium-size pile of toxic ash.

Every year, our power companies dump roughly 2.3 billion pounds of this tainted ash in landfills and holding ponds, many precariously close to rivers and neighborhoods.

And every year, some of these landfills and ponds leak. Scattered across South Carolina, these vast pits and ponds of coal ash are polluting groundwater and waterways with arsenic, selenium and other chemicals that can cause health problems in wildlife and people, a Post and Courier Watchdog investigation found.

Water under some landfills has concentrations of arsenic many times the federal limit, documents obtained under the S.C. Freedom of Information Act show.

Consider:

— Near Moncks Corner, in the quiet Whitesville community, arsenic-laced water from a coal ash landfill is leaking into a nearby pond.

— Farther north, near Congaree National Park, arsenic 200 to 400 times the federal drinking water limit has been found in groundwater at SCE&G's plant on the banks of the Wateree River.

— On the Savannah River, SCE&G's Urquhart plant has groundwater tainted with arsenic eight times above the federal standard.

— Closer to Charleston, near Canadys, a breach in an earthen wall at two ash ponds allowed arsenic and nickel to pollute groundwater next to the Edisto River.

— Arsenic levels at Santee Cooper's Grainger coal plant in Conway measured more than 900 parts per billion, 90 times higher than the federal drinking water limit. Significant contamination also has been found in coal ash ponds at the Savannah River Site.

Because of lax government oversight and bureaucratic loopholes, coal ash landfill operators here have polluted groundwater at their plants for years without a single fine.

So far, contamination is limited to the landfill operators' properties and the groundwater below, according to engineers with utilities and state Department of Health and Environmental Control. They say that they're unaware of anyone being sickened by coal waste. Officials with SCE&G and Santee Cooper say their ash disposal operations are in full compliance with state and federal laws.

Still, while coal and other industry interests downplay the dangers of coal ash, it's increasingly clear that many ash ponds and landfills have caused serious pollution problems here and across the nation.

An analysis last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found 67 cases in 26 states where ash waste tainted groundwater and lakes.

A different EPA study found that people who live next to certain types of coal ash landfills and ponds have a higher risk of getting cancer.

Meanwhile, residents in other states are filing lawsuits alleging that ash basins polluted their drinking wells. In Maryland, state regulators recently fined a utility $1 million over a leaking coal ash pit.

The debate over coal ash has been simmering for years, eclipsed by more heated exchanges about mountaintop removal in Appalachia and coal's role in global warming. That could change.

Earlier this year, South Carolina health officials tightened ash disposal rules — after years of allowing landfill operators to treat ash as if it were no more dangerous than a pile of construction debris.

Meanwhile, Santee Cooper wants to build a new ash landfill and pond next to its proposed Pee Dee coal plant, and SCE&G is building new landfill near Congaree National Park. Citizens groups and nearby residents are fighting both projects.

All this is happening at a time when the ash itself is likely to grow more contaminated. To comply with clean air laws, utilities are shelling out hundreds of million dollars to better scrub pollutants from their smokestacks. But this scrubbing process can produce ash with higher levels of arsenic, mercury and other poisons.

Put another way, as coal-burning utilities try to clean the air, they may create new environmental challenges on the ground and in the water.

Dangerous and useful

Coal combustion waste is usually made of fly ash, bottom ash and sludge from air scrubbers.

Bottom ash looks like chunks of black volcanic rock and comes from the bottom of a furnace. Fly ash is lighter and once flew out of chimneys of coal-fired power plants. Fly ash contributed to "killer smogs," such as the one in 1948 in Donora, Pa., that sickened 5,910 of the town's 14,000, and an even deadlier blanket of soot that smothered London in 1952 and killed 4,000 people.

Pollution laws in the United States now require coal-burning utilities to capture nearly all fly ash before it gets into the air. Not only has this helped clear our skies, it also forced utilities to find more creative ways to send less of the stuff to landfills.

Fortunately, it turns out that coal ash is surprisingly useful.

Put fly ash under a microscope, and you'll see tiny glass-like spheres. When you put these spheres in concrete, they fill voids and create a ball-bearing effect that makes the concrete more durable. The Romans knew this and used volcanic ash in the Coliseum and Pantheon.

More recently, the equivalent of 330 trainloads of fly ash went into concrete for the new Cooper River bridge's diamond towers, which required a concrete of extra-high density. Bottom ash, meanwhile, can be used to make lighter concrete blocks, and scrubber sludge can be turned into wallboard. Some ash can even be incorporated into bowling balls. Santee Cooper, notably, has managed to create programs to reuse more than 85 percent of its ash.

Still, the nation's coal plants crank so much ash — 125 million tons in 2006, according to the American Coal Ash Association — that these boilers generate plenty of ash to spare. In 2006, about 70 million tons went into landfills, ash ponds and abandoned mines, sometimes causing environmental headaches.

When ash comes into contact with water, contaminants including arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium and others can migrate into groundwater, lakes and streams. Arsenic is usually the biggest concern. Studies have linked prolonged exposure to arsenic with cancer, digestive problems and other health problems. But scientists also are concerned about selenium and mercury, which also can be dangerous to people and wildlife in small doses.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency released a study identifying 67 cases of coal ash waste contamination, including 24 "proven cases" of environmental damage, including two ash ponds in South Carolina — one at the Savannah River Site and another next to the SCE&G coal plant near Canadys. Also last year, the EPA released a draft of another study of 181 coal ash sites nationwide that found unlined ash ponds posed a cancer risk hundreds of times more than what the EPA deems acceptable. Scientists with Earthjustice, a group critical of ash basins, said unlined ash pits posed the same kind of danger as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

As far back as 2000, the EPA concluded that ash wastes "could pose risks to human health ... and there is sufficient evidence that adequate controls may not be in place."

Despite these studies and conclusions, the agency never classified coal ash as a hazardous waste. That enabled coal burning operations to dump ash in relatively primitive landfills and ponds.

In South Carolina, for instance, utilities and other coal-burning industries, such as MeadWestvaco, only had to have a 2-foot separation between the ash and groundwater. Some landfill operators simply lined the bottoms with compacted dirt.

Mixing zone pass

Despite long-standing contamination problems at several South Carolina ash sites, DHEC hasn't issued any fines, a review of agency files and interviews with state environmental officials show.

This is the case even though the utility officials and DHEC have acknowledged in at least one case that pollution laws were violated. Instead, through a little-known law, DHEC grants landfill operators permission to create "mixing zones," a government pass to mix polluted groundwater with clean water.

According to DHEC regulations, landfill operators can create a mixing zone if they try to minimize the contamination in some fashion, and as long as the pollutants aren't dangerous or prone to move much.

How has this mixing zone strategy worked?

SCE&G's Canadys plant provides one answer.

Arsenic and the Edisto

In 1974, SCE&G started dumping ash into a holding pond next to its plant along the Edisto River, and since 1982, scientists have found arsenic and nickel in groundwater, which eventually spread beyond SCE&G's land, according to an EPA report.

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To solve the problem, SCE&G "was allowed to buy neighboring property under state policy at the time," the EPA report said.

SCE&G asked DHEC for permission to create a mixing zone below the pond, and DHEC agreed. The power company then built a second ash pond, but arsenic from this new pond also made it into groundwater.

So SCE&G sought DHEC's approval to expand the original mixing zone to cover the new polluting pond, and DHEC once again gave a thumbs up, documents show.

Now, tests show arsenic and selenium in groundwater at the very edge of this larger mixing zone. Some areas are just short walk from the Edisto and have arsenic levels four times the federal drinking water limit.

Neither DHEC, nor SCE&G have calculated how much arsenic or selenium may have spread beyond the mixing zone and reached the Edisto River, if any. They also say the ash pond doesn't pose a threat to the public or wildlife.

Younan of SCE&G explained that the arsenic leached into groundwater after a wall at the new ash pond failed. He said the utility spent about $11 million to fix the problem, and did so voluntarily. "I'm not going to sit here and say we didn't have problems at Canadys," he said. "But we identified the problem and jumped right on it, and we had no problem spending $11 million to fix it."

He said this expensive fix should cause arsenic levels outside the mixing zone to decline.

Still, the EPA last year classified the site as one of 24 "proven cases" nationwide of damage to the environment, a classification with which Younan strongly disagrees. "We know we have a problem, and we fixed the problem," he said.

'Fallen down'

Some critics of ash waste dumps say state and federal agencies have long turned a blind eye to evidence that coal-ash waste is a serious pollution issue. "They've fallen down on the job about this waste in a big way," said Jeff Stant, an activist with the Environmental Integrity Project who has studied coal ash issues for more than a decade.

Stant estimates that more than 60 million tons of coal ash is dumped every year without meeting any basic safeguards. He said heavy lobbying by coal and utility interests successfully slowed effective state and federal regulators. "The problem is that they want to keep coal cheap," he said, "but they're doing it on the backs of people and the environment."

The disposal of coal ash will only get more difficult, he added. As utilities install more scrubbers, coal ash will have even higher levels of arsenic, chromium and mercury. These scrubbers also generate higher overall volumes of ash.

Because of this, DHEC in May tightened regulations for ash disposal. New landfills will need better liners and systems to collect water seeping from ash pits. Other states are taking similar measures.

But what about the old landfills?

During the past several years, power companies and other coal ash handlers nationwide have been hit with a number of lawsuits and fines.

In the town of Pines, Indiana, utilities dumped more than a million tons of coal ash in a local landfill and used the material as road fill. Now, after coal-ash chemicals were found in drinking wells, Pines is on the EPA's Superfund roster of the nation's most troublesome toxic waste sites.

Earlier this year in Montana, power companies paid $25 million to settle lawsuits by plant workers and residents who alleged that utilities knew they were contaminating water supplies for years before they notified residents.

And, last year, Maryland regulators fined a power company and its contractor $1 million after coal ash buried in an unlined gravel pit poisoned nearby drinking wells.

For years, coal-burning companies, along with federal and state regulators, viewed ash as if was no more dangerous than dirt. But contamination cases here and across the country, along with a growing body of evidence about the effects of ash on wildlife, raise new questions about how this little-known byproduct is handled — and how it will be dealt with in the future.

Reach Tony Bartelme at 937-5554 or tbartelme@postandcourier.com.

Note to readers: Earlier versions of this story gave incorrect information about the allowable maximum level of arsenic in drinking water. The Post and Courier regrets the error.