A group seeking tighter environmental control of power plants named the Glen Lyn station in Giles County this week to a nationwide list of potentially under-regulated and possibly dangerous facilities.

But the report may have sounded a false alarm about the American Electric Power facility.

The report, "In Harm's Way," says federal authorities should adopt a stringent plan now under consideration to more tightly control coal ash from coal-fired power plants.

Authors working for the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club said they identified more than three dozen locations not being monitored where coal ash led to water contamination.

Glen Lyn is not one of them, however.

Although practices in the late 1970s led to coal ash contamination of a stream near Glen Lyn, those practices were stopped by early 1980 and populations of insects and small organisms showed signs of recovery 10 months later, the report said.

The "In Harm's Way" team did not have the time or money to evaluate what is happening today at Glen Lyn, Russell Boulding, chief scientist for power plant analysis section of the report, said in an interview.

"We are not asserting that this was a continuing problem," the environmental consultant said.

Boulding said, however, that he believes people living near Glen Lyn today should question authorities and evaluate water-quality controls to ensure their drinking water is not tainted by power plant coal ash, which contains heavy metals toxic to humans. A chief concern is water used to process coal ash, Boulding said.

John Shepelwich, an AEP spokesman, said the utility operator years ago switched from a wet process to a dry, landfill-type process for coal ash management.

The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which inspects the coal ash operation, has no issues or concerns about the pits today, DEQ spokesman William Hayden said.

In addition, some Glen Lyn coal ash is trucked from the power plant to Cumberland Park, a planned 7-acre business park in Narrows that has taken the material as a fill.

Tests of groundwater at that location have shown no contamination by the fly ash, said Howard Spencer, who directs the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, which owns the park.

The fly ash storage units have been given a "low hazard potential" rating by the Virginia officials, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Low hazard potential, according to the EPA, means that in the event of a failure of the unit, there is a very low (or almost no) possibility of death or significant damage to infrastructure or the environment.