New federal rules aim to clean up toxic coal ash, including nearly a dozen sites in Kentucky

Closed Dale power station at Ford in Clark County among places affected

By Liam Niemeyer | Kentucky Lantern

Kentucky is one of a minor­i­ty of states that pro­duces most of its elec­tric­i­ty by burn­ing coal. A byprod­uct of that lega­cy today: cre­at­ing mil­lions of tons of what’s known as coal ash, a waste from burn­ing coal con­tain­ing a slew of tox­ic met­als that’s often stored by util­i­ties and pow­er pro­duc­ers in impound­ment ponds and landfills.

Without prop­er pro­tec­tions or cleanup at these coal ash sites, the ash can be blown into the air or seep into near­by ground­wa­ter. Coal ash impound­ments fail­ing have led to envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter, such as when more than 1 bil­lion gal­lons of coal ash slur­ry poured into the Emory River near Kingston, Tennessee, in 2008. More than 50 work­ers who cleaned up the after­math died and more than 150 are sick after not hav­ing prop­er protection. 

Such prob­lems led the Environmental Protection Agency to issue rules in 2015 requir­ing the pits where the coal ash is stored to be lined and have dust con­trols and for the ground­wa­ter near oper­at­ing coal-fired pow­er plants to be monitored.

On Thursday, the EPA expand­ed those reg­u­la­tions to cov­er coal ash land­fills and impound­ments at retired or inac­tive coal-fired pow­er plants as well, some­thing envi­ron­men­tal groups such as Earthjustice have called for. The agency is also seek­ing to reg­u­late sites where coal ash has been dis­posed of out­side of a reg­u­lat­ed impound­ment or land­fill. The new coal ash rules are part of a num­ber of oth­er final­ized rules that aim to dra­mat­i­cal­ly curb green­house gas emis­sions and water pol­lu­tion from coal-fired and gas-fired pow­er plants. 

The EPA states 194 “lega­cy” impound­ments at 85 facil­i­ties across the coun­try will be sub­ject to the expand­ed coal ash rule, with 11 such sites in Kentucky at for­mer coal-fired pow­er plants includ­ing the Kenneth C. Coleman Generating Station, the William C. Dale Power Station, the Green River Generating Station, the Tyrone Generating Station and the Pineville Generating Station. 

The fed­er­al agency notes some coal ash ponds at these for­mer coal-fired pow­er plants in Kentucky are clos­ing or have closed under over­sight from state offi­cials, while the clo­sure sta­tus is unclear for oth­er sites. The EPA cites data from Earthjustice in its count of inac­tive coal ash sites that will now be reg­u­lat­ed under the expand­ed rules. Earthjustice pre­vi­ous­ly tal­lied the num­ber of unreg­u­lat­ed coal ash sites in Kentucky at 25.

Abell Russ, a senior attor­ney with the Environmental Integrity Project, told reporters ear­li­er this week ground­wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from unlined, unreg­u­lat­ed “coal ash dumps” can often go unad­dressed because the sites are clas­si­fied as an inac­tive or “lega­cy” coal ash site by the EPA, even when sit­u­at­ed next to coal ash sites that are regulated. 

“They’re not doing any­thing about it because they say it’s all com­ing from the old­er, larg­er ash pond that closed a long time ago, and so there’s no cleanup hap­pen­ing there,” Russ said. “This is a huge loophole.” 

Russ said the EPA expand­ing reg­u­la­tions to coal ash ponds at retired or for­mer coal-fired pow­er plants will require util­i­ties to mon­i­tor and improve ground­wa­ter at these sites, though enforce­ment capac­i­ty remains a concern. 

Tom FitzGerald, a for­mer long-time lob­by­ist for the envi­ron­men­tal legal group Kentucky Resources Council, sub­mit­ted a pub­lic com­ment about the rule urg­ing the EPA to approve the expand­ed coal ash reg­u­la­tions, say­ing the exact num­ber of unreg­u­lat­ed, inac­tive coal ash sites was unknown because util­i­ties aren’t required to report the total num­ber of sites. 

“These dumps are almost cer­tain­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing water and threat­en­ing health and the envi­ron­ment; how­ev­er, mon­i­tor­ing data are not cur­rent­ly avail­able for most unreg­u­lat­ed sites,” Fitzgerald wrote. “It is appro­pri­ate and nec­es­sary that these lega­cy facil­i­ties be addressed and that they be required to be ful­ly char­ac­ter­ized and prop­er­ly closed.” 

Kentucky util­i­ties in pre­vi­ous pub­lic com­ments on the coal ash rule have crit­i­cized the expand­ed coal ash reg­u­la­tions as unnec­es­sary, expen­sive to ratepay­ers and dis­rup­tive to reme­di­a­tion already con­duct­ed at some sites under the over­sight of state officials. 

Clay Larkin, a lawyer for the Utility Information Exchange of Kentucky rep­re­sent­ing all of Kentucky’s major util­i­ties, in a July 2023 pub­lic com­ment wrote that many of the “lega­cy” coal ash sites that would be new­ly reg­u­lat­ed are “heav­i­ly reveg­e­tat­ed” and would require “sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal impacts” to remove the coal ash. 

“State-led clo­sure efforts at many of these sites have accom­plished care­ful man­age­ment of exist­ing risks and, in some cas­es, com­plete elim­i­na­tion of risk,” Larkin wrote. “In reach­ing spe­cif­ic clo­sure deci­sions, states have bal­anced the con­cerns of, and impacts on, local and region­al pop­u­la­tions while lim­it­ing or elim­i­nat­ing envi­ron­men­tal impacts to areas where site con­di­tions are already well under­stood because of years of study and evaluation.” 

In its final rule, the EPA explained that it could not exempt inac­tive coal ash sites that state offi­cials have deemed as “closed” because of evi­dence that past state-approved clo­sures were “sig­nif­i­cant­ly less pro­tec­tive” in pre­vent­ing ground­wa­ter contamination.