West Virginia governor Joe Manchin has asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to classify coal ash as a hazardous waste. According to the Charleston Gazette, EPA has been considering such an action since 1980—in that year, Congress directed EPA to study the issue and EPA has been studying it ever since. The Clinton administration was inclined to call coal ash “hazardous” but backed off under industry pressure, and the Bush administration never raised the question. There’s now a lot of pressure to do something. Coal ahs is getting more toxic, for one thing—scrubbers are removing toxics that used to go into the air, and putting them instead into the ash (or into the water). Plus, there’s more ash now, 130 million tons a year, expected to be 175 million tons a year five years from now. And the issue hit the front pages in December 2008 when an ash impoundment failed at a TVA power plant in Tennessee. TVA has assured state officials that its cleanup is safe for everyone, but fears persist. So there is a lot of pressure for the EPA to go ahead and declare coal ash officially “hazardous.”
There’s still a lot of pressure opposing that as well. Coal companies and electric utilities are stoutly opposed. Their argument, repeated by West Virginia Governor Manchin, is that a lot of coal ash is put to good use in things like gypsum wallboard and roof shingles. But over half of each year’s crop of ash goes into landfills, which may or may not be lined and may or may not be inspected for safety. If they’re regulated at all, it’s by the individual states. Last year when West Virginia checked up on its waste impoundments it found problems at two-thirds of them, plus two impoundments they hadn’t even known about. And there are problems for people living nearby: EPA reported last year that such people may have a 1 in 50 chance of getting cancer from arsenic leached into the water.
A Kentucky man has been sentenced for intimidating a federal mine inspector at his Dickenson County mine, reports the Coalfield Progress. Jimmy Tackett of Melvin pled guilty to charges he threatened two inspectors at his Calvary Coal #2 mine in January.
A Virginia bill that would have restricted surface mining in the state seems to have died, reports the Bluefield Telegraph. The bill sponsored by Fairfax Senator Patricia Ticer would have prohibited mining waste in streams, a rule that mining spokespeople say would make mining impossible. They made that case in Richmond, lobbying the legislature against the bill So did supporters of the bill, from southwest Virginia as well as other parts of the state, but the coal folks were more numerous and they prevailed. The bill didn’t come up in the relevant committee—probably because there weren’t the votes to pass it. So under state Senate rules it can’t come up again unless someone pushes it in next year’s session.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller backed off a little from some tough comments he made about President Obama’s coal policy, reports Huntington TV station WSAZ. In a Senate committee hearing last week, Rockefeller had said he doesn’t believe the president is actually backing clean coal. Speaking at a rally in Huntington, Rockefeller said he is still a supporter of most of Obama’s policies, but he wants to push the president for more funding for clean coal research and implementation. He said, “Coal is not clean, but it can be made clean. We’ve seen it in West Virginia.” The Senator was referring to the Mountaineer plant, and AEP coal plant in Mason County that captures and stores part of its carbon dioxide output.
While Rockefeller and other coal supporters say Obama is too hostile to coal, many on the other side of the environmental divide say Obama is too pro-coal. The New York Times reports that many of Obama’s environmental supporters are disappointed, even angry, that the president has stopped pushing an environmental agenda. Last week’s announcement of government support for two new nuclear plants has strengthened that opposition. Ironically, coal and environmental interests agree, for once, in opposing nuclear power.