One coal ash bill died, but another is still alive.

Del. Anne Crockett-Stark, R-Wytheville, and Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, submitted bills in the General Assembly to give residents and local governments a chance to influence projects such as the coal ash as fill material operation taking shape at the edge of Narrows.

The Giles County Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit formed for educational enrichment in the county, plans to use 254,000 cubic yards of coal as fill material. The ash -- about three years' worth of coal waste from Appalachian Power Co's Glen Lyn plant -- would cover more than 7 acres beside the New River about 30 feet deep. That would raise the riverbank to the level of U.S. 460, creating what Howard Spencer, the partnership's executive director, says will be a building site for a job-creating business.

A group called the Concerned Citizens of Giles County is fighting the project, even as site preparation continues. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead and other toxins.

In November, the Giles County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution asking that the project include a liner and monitoring wells and that the composition of the ash be tested regularly. The partnership still hasn't responded.

If the ash were being put in a landfill, the liner and test wells would be required. But using it as fill for a construction project is considered a beneficial use -- a recycling of industrial waste -- which exempts it from those requirements.

When Crockett-Stark and Edwards submitted bills that would have required public hearings on similar projects, the Department of Environmental Quality drafted a substitute that would remove the exemption when coal ash is used as fill in a 100-year flood plain, as it would be in Narrows. Both Crockett-Stark and Edwards adopted the DEQ version.

Crockett-Stark's bill was killed by the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources. Edwards' bill passed the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources, but not before Appalachian lobbyist Ron Jefferson got it amended.

Jefferson was concerned the bill might apply to the Giles County project. That would increase the project's cost. So he asked Edwards to specifically exempt it.

"They're saying basically, 'Don't worry about it. That won't be a problem.' " Edwards said last week. "I said, 'OK. Get me a letter from DEQ.' "

According to Alison Baird, Edwards' legislative aide, Jefferson did better than that. DEQ director David Paylor testified before the committee that DEQ is comfortable with the Giles County project.

So now the bill applies to "any project proposed after July 1, 2008."

Jim McGrath, president of the Concerned Citizens, took the project's exemption in stride.

"We took it for granted that it wouldn't be retroactive," McGrath said of the bill.

This was the legislation's first hurdle. It still must pass the Senate and the House and be signed by the governor to become law.