Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Bills would give communities a voice in fly ash debate
Legislation in Richmond would increase discussion and scrutiny of fill projects using the byproduct.
Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times
Work continues at the AEP fly ash site on U.S. 460 in Narrows. A project called Cumberland Park would put three years' worth of coal ash from the Glen Lyn plant in the site, raising the riverbank.
Follow the legislation
- In the House, it’s titled HB514.
- In the Senate, it’s SB717.
Related
PEARISBURG -- When Appalachian Power and the Giles County Partnership for Excellence decided to pile coal ash from the Glen Lyn power plant in the New River's flood plain, county supervisors and residents had no official voice in the process.
Putting 254,000 cubic yards of the ash -- which contains arsenic and other heavy metals -- on the riverbank is a "beneficial use," according to Virginia's Department of Environmental Quality, because it's being used as construction fill. When all that ash is layered and compacted it will raise at least 7 acres by about 30 feet. That will create a building site called Cumberland Park.
Because it's classified as a beneficial use, the project is exempt from solid waste regulations that would require a liner beneath the ash to keep toxins out of the water table and test wells nearby to make sure the protections are working. The beneficial-use designation also means there's no requirement for local government approval, public hearings or citizen comment.
Giles County supervisors have pledged to do what they could to make sure such a thing isn't done in their county again. They turned to state legislators, who began filing bills. Del. Anne Crockett-Stark, R-Wytheville, and Sen. John Edwards, D-Roanoke, proposed legislation that would require proponents of fill-related projects using coal ash, also known as coal combustion byproduct, to hold public meetings and supply minutes of those meetings to the DEQ. Lobbyists have become involved, however, according to county Administrator Chris McKlarney, and they are seeking amendments to the legislation that would require public meetings only if the local governing body requested it. The DEQ has weighed in with a simpler and apparently more effective alternative -- a potential requirement that any coal combustion byproduct deposited in a 100-year flood plain be treated as solid waste.
That means a project such as Cumberland Park would have to follow the same rules as a landfill and that would require public hearings, a liner, monitoring wells and, unless the local government has already designated the site as a landfill, a rezoning.
"That changes everything," McKlarney told supervisors in a meeting last week.
The information had come in just that afternoon, McKlarney told the board, and Crockett-Stark needed to know what the board thinks about the proposal by the next morning. The bill was supposed to be heard by the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources on Wednesday. The committee put it off because of the proposed substitute offered by the DEQ, McKlarney said.
The supervisors made copies of the alternatives, distributed them to the audience and asked for advice. Everyone on both sides of the dais, it seemed, preferred the DEQ version.
Crockett-Stark said that's the one she'll take to the committee this week.
