NARROWS -- Eight police officers stood across the back of the Narrows High School auditorium where 90 people gathered to hear why it's a good idea to put 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash beside the New River. A slide projected on a wall of the auditorium declared, "Glen Lyn Coal Ash Not a Waste Product ... A Product WASTED!"

It looked and sounded like high drama, but the plan already has all the government approval it needs to proceed. The meeting, organized by Appalachian Power Co., was intended to calm people uneasy about putting the ash in the flood plain of an American Heritage River.

Howard Spencer, the man most of the audience wanted most to hear on the subject, spent most of the three-hour meeting standing just outside the auditorium. "I just wanted to take myself out of it," Spencer said.

Spencer is chairman of the Giles County Board of Supervisors, town manager of Glen Lyn and executive director of the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit organization that is driving the coal ash project. Appalachian, owner of the Glen Lyn power plant, is paying for the engineering and testing at the site. And the utility has contributed money to the Partnership for Excellence. But the partnership owns the land -- land it plans to sell once three years' of Appalachian coal ash has been piled and compacted about 30 feet high. That will bring about 7 acres of the riverbank level with U.S. 460.

The money from that sale would go to support vocational education programs, but Spencer said he would consider giving the land to the right developer. He also said he would like to see some industry on the site, though the presentation inside the auditorium said the land is destined for commercial development.

Spencer tried to deflect questions.

"The experts you asked me for are sitting up there," he told the crowd, pointing to the front of the auditorium. "Please direct your questions to them."

The experts said the chance of anything getting into the river from the site is small. Even if it did, they said, the effects would be minimal -- probably undetectable.

"Essentially, it is melted dirt," Thomas Schmaltz, environmental director for Headwaters Incorporated, said of the ash. Headwaters, which will run the Giles project, has done similar projects in 42 states, he said, some of them in flood plains. "It's just something you engineer around."

Ishwar Merarka, a soil scientist Appalachian brought in to evaluate the project's long-term effects, also compared coal ash to soil. They have a very similar chemical composition, Merarka said -- though his slides showed that the ash has much more arsenic and lead than regular soil. His slides didn't mention mercury, a toxin released when coal burns, an omission that several people in the audience pointed out.

Rob Reash, an environmental scientist who works for Appalachian, said mercury is generally not a concern with coal ash. He also said the toxins found in the ash aren't in high enough concentrations to damage the river or the animals living in it.

"Toxicity is a relative term," Reash said. "Just because a person or an animal comes in contact with a chemical, it doesn't mean it's going to have a toxic effect.

"The dose makes the poison."

The river would dilute any leachate, Reash said.

A dam turns the New River into Bluestone Lake about 30 miles below the ash fill site. Reash had no information about effects to the lake.

Despite the reassurances, several members of the audience asked Appalachian and the Partnership for Excellence to add a liner to prevent leaching and test wells to monitor groundwater near the site. Neither of those measures is required by law, but Joe Ryder, an Appalachian engineer, said the company would consider test wells. A liner is out of the question, he said, because that would mean re-engineering the project.