PEARISBURG -- While the U.S. Senate was holding hearings about coal ash, the Concerned Citizens of Giles County were complaining to the board of supervisors about the county's newest coal ash pile.

"The catastrophe in Harriman, Tenn., on Dec. 22 should be a wake-up call to America," Darlene Cunningham told the board at its meeting Thursday.

An earthen dam near Harriman gave way and about 1 billion gallons of a mixture of coal ash and water covered 300 acres and contaminated the Emory and Clinch rivers, tributaries of the Tennessee. Three houses were destroyed and nine others were damaged. The sludge contains arsenic, lead, mercury and other toxins.

About an hour before Cunningham spoke, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., opened the Senate hearing by saying the federal government has left coal ash unregulated for too long.

Cumberland Park, a project that's filling about seven acres of New River flood plain with 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash, won't contain slurry as the Tennessee impoundment did. But the coal ash in Giles County contains the same toxins.

Cumberland Park has no protective liner, except for one added under a relatively small section of the project where water was standing in wet weather. Cumberland Park's ash will raise the river bank about 30 feet, making it level with U.S. 460 to create a potential building site. Because the ash is being used as construction fill, no liner is required.

James McGrath, another member of the Concerned Citizens, called Thursday for an injunction to stop dumping at Cumberland Park, citing procedural questions as well as environmental risks.

In February 2007, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the project met "the minimum floodplain management criteria" of the National Flood Plain Insurance Study. McGrath contends that was when the project evolved from idea to fact.

The project was presented as commercial development, but the land is zoned for industrial use. So, McGrath argues, the county should have held public hearings to rezone the land. That would have given residents a chance to comment and the county a chance to influence the project.

The county and the partnership have maintained that public hearings weren't required by Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regulations.

McGrath said more than five months passed between the FEMA approval and the application to DEQ -- five months in which the county could have acted. McGrath also pointed to a letter in which County Administrator Chris McKlarney told DEQ the project complied with all county ordinances. But a commercial project on industrial land does not comply with county ordinances.

The board did not respond to McGrath or Cunningham.