Old King Coal

On December 22, 2008, a retaining wall at a landfill that stored fly ash from a Kingston, Tennessee, coal-fired power plant ruptured. Fly ash, a toxic byproduct of the coal-burning process, is separated from emissions by smokestack scrubbers, mixed with water, and stored in landfills. Enough slurry to fill 1,700 Olympic-sized swimming pools was dumped onto nearby homes and in tributaries of the Tennessee River. The accident killed millions of fish, destroyed 300 acres of property, and badly contaminated local water sources. The Tennessee Valley Authority estimates that the spill will require a multi-year, billion-dollar cleanup effort.

Had this disaster been a nuclear accident, citizens and Congress would rightfully be up in arms. But the largest fly-ash spill in American history has marshaled little public opposition to coal. Both Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to regard “clean coal” as a potential major source of green energy. Despite significant advances in coal technology, commendable progress in reducing air pollution, and reductions in mining’s environmental impact, the Kingston spill demonstrates that coal is not yet a viable option for long-term “clean” fuel production. The accident should cause Americans to demand tighter regulation of fly-ash disposal as well as to re-examine the long-term role of coal in our energy supply.

Admittedly, there are reasonable arguments to be made in favor of the continued use of coal. It is cheap, abundant, and domestically produced. Smokestack scrubbers remove most of the pollutants in coal before they can be emitted into the atmosphere. The federal government requires mining companies to restore exhausted mines to their former natural state. Electric utilities also claim that discoveries in coal gasification (the production of synthetic natural gas from coal) and carbon sequestration will dramatically reduce resultant greenhouse- gas emissions, rendering coal an ideal fuel for a post-cap-and-trade future.

But American coal-fired power plants produce 130 million tons of fly ash every year. Industry reuses some of it for asphalt, cement, and brick manufacture, but 57 percent of fly ash is disposed of in hundreds of landfills across the country. Astonishingly, the Environmental Protection Agency does not regulate fly ash, which contains arsenic, lead, mercury, and uranium, as a hazardous material. It recommends that coal plants store fly ash in insulation-lined landfills to prevent leakage but has no mandate to actually enforce this suggestion.

Therefore, it is no great surprise that power generators routinely store fly ash in unsafe conditions—and not just in Kingston. A 2007 EPA report concluded that fly ash had contaminated surface and ground water at 67 sites. Last month, the Department of the Interior found that 27 percent of American freshwater fish contained unsafe levels of mercury; fly-ash pollution is a likely contributing factor. The coal industry’s failure to safely dispose of fly ash has put hundreds of American towns in harm’s way. A rapid and meaningful response from the federal government is needed to prevent future disasters.

The EPA has already taken steps in the right direction. In March, the agency’s director, Lisa Jackson, announced a plan to inspect disposal sites, order cleanups and repairs, and develop safety regulations to be announced by December. Furthermore, Representative Nick Rahall has proposed legislation that would federally mandate engineering standards for fly-ash impoundments. The TVA is now preparing to convert its coal waste disposal from slurry form to dry storage, which is much less likely to leach into soil and cause toxic spills.

This strong start must be backed up by further action. The EPA should classify fly ash as a hazardous material, just as mercury, battery acid, and PCBs are. Doing so would require power generators to adhere to higher disposal standards and clean up existing dumping sites as well as increase public awareness of fly ash’s toxicity. Regulators should also ban disposal of fly ash in slurry form and require utilities to store dry fly ash in lined landfills to avoid leaching. The federal government should create financial incentives for makers of building materials to recycle more fly ash in their manufacturing processes, so that less is dumped.

Finally, the next national energy bill should strongly discourage the building of new coal-fired power plants, even those that include carbon capture and sequestration. Until all fly ash is recycled and/or safely disposed of, the danger of polluted groundwater and sludge spills will still loom large. New coal plants will only serve to exacerbate a serious and unsolved problem. Besides, solar, wind, and nuclear energy do not emit greenhouse gases, as coal currently does.

Thirty years ago, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident spurred Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to make nuclear power plants safer. Similarly, the Kingston spill has revealed a need for government action and greater responsibility from coal-burning utilities. The coal industry must be pressured by the public and elected officials into becoming as “clean” as it can be. Despite what the industry may publicly proclaim, there is no such thing as clean coal, at least not yet. Nobody knows this better than the people of Kingston, Tennessee.


Anthony P. Dedousis ’11, a Crimson editorial editor, is an economics concentrator in Leverett House..