ALAN KIM The Roanoke Times

The east end of the coal ash fill area is shaping up at Cumberland Park. To the right is U.S. 460. To the left is a temporary earth berm, which will be removed after the fill is completed. The area shown is about two of the more than seven acres that will be filled with coal ash from the Glen Lyn power plant.

NARROWS -- Any day now.

Maybe today. Certainly by next week.

Appalachian Power Co. will begin trucking coal ash from the Glen Lyn power plant to Cumberland Park, a fill site at the edge of Narrows, very soon, according to Joe Ryder, the plant's environmental coordinator.

When the first ash is dumped, John Robertson, the lawyer for an organization called Concerned Citizens of Giles County, plans to file a motion asking Circuit Court Judge Colin Gibb to empanel a Giles County grand jury to determine whether Cumberland Park is a nuisance. Gibb said last month that he will put the question to a grand jury.

On Tuesday, Ryder showed a media gaggle around the site.

Cumberland Park is a plan to put 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash on property beside the New River. The Giles County Partnership for Excellence, a nonprofit formed for educational enrichment in the county, plans to use the ash as fill material. The ash -- about three years' worth of coal waste from Appalachian's Glen Lyn plant -- would cover more than seven acres about 30 feet deep. That would raise the riverbank to the level of U.S. 460, creating a potential building site for a job-creating business at the edge of Narrows.

"The land will be improved by putting the fly ash in here," Ryder said.

The partnership's directors plan to sell the site and give the money to the county schools to benefit vocational education.

The Concerned Citizens of Giles County point out that coal ash contains arsenic, lead and other toxins. The group argues that piling the ash in the New River's 100-year flood plain threatens the health of the river, residents and the tourism industry.

On Tuesday, Ryder emphasized all the effort that has been put into preventing the ash or anything in it from getting into the river or the groundwater.

The ash will be 6 feet above the water table -- about three times more than state regulations require. The layer of soil covering the project will be thicker than regulations require. Pipes will carry runoff from the highway away from the site. Monitoring wells will alert Headwaters, the company overseeing the project, if something does seep out. There's a sediment pond and more than a mile of silt fencing protecting the river from runoff.

And then there's the berm.

"I can't over emphasize how rigorously this berm is constructed," Ryder said.

The earthen berm will rise about a foot and a half above the 100-year flood plain. It will be held in place with steel supports and vegetation.

The Glen Lyn power plant burns about 2,000 tons of coal each day. That produces about 200 tons of ash. When the process gets rolling, 18 to 28 dump trucks filled with ash will make the eight-mile run from Glen Lyn to Narrows each day.

Ryder stuck his hand into a bucket of fly ash Tuesday and squeezed the ash into a ball.

"It soaks up water like a sponge," he said. That's one reason he doubts water will percolate through the fill. "This stuff has an affinity for water."

Ash will be mixed with water at the power plant to cut down on dust and to get it to the right consistency for compacting. Trucks will carry it to Cumberland Park, where a bulldozer will spread it 10 inches to a foot thick. Then a roller will compact it. If the ash needs to be wetter to keep down dust or to improve compaction, there's a $90,000 irrigation system and a water truck on site.

"It should have a crust on it. You shouldn't have any airborne issues," project manager Randall Bowling said. If there are such issues, "that's what the irrigation system is for."

Despite the community debate surrounding the site, at least two facts are settled.

Cumberland Park has met all the regulatory requirements it must meet.

It will save Appalachian a lot of money.

Appalachian is paying about $25 per ton to have the waste trucked to a mine site near Charleston, W.Va. With rising fuel costs, that might be up to $29 per ton now, Ryder said. The cost of disposing of the ash at Cumberland Park will be $18 per ton.