EPA Coal Ash Plan Criticized

  • The new coal ash clean-up project will take four years and cost 268-million dollars. (Photo courtesy of Brian Stansberry)

More than a year ago – when an earthen wall broke at a power plant in Tennessee, 500-million gallons of toxic coal ash and water were spilled. If you compare it to other environmental tragedies – it was 50 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Half of the coal ash spill’s been cleaned up, but crews are still working to get the rest of it. And as Tanya Ott reports there are concerns about a new plan to deal with the ash:

Transcript

More than a year ago – when an earthen wall broke at a power plant in Tennessee – 500-million gallons of toxic coal ash and water were spilled. If you compare it to other environmental tragedies – it was 50 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill. Half of the coal ash spill’s been cleaned up, but crews are still working to get the rest of it. And as Tanya Ott reports there are concerns about a new plan to deal with the ash:

The plan comes from the US Environmental Protection Agency. Clean-up crews would scoop up the ash and put it in the same pit it came from… but the pit’s been reinforced with concrete. What the plan doesn’t call for, though, is a liner to make sure no metals leach into groundwater. Tennessee law and even the EPA’s new proposed coal ash rules require liners.

Craig Zeller is the project manager for the EPA. He says because this pit isn’t new – or expanding – it doesn’t have to comply with the rules. Plus, he says, water testing in the area shows there’s no problem with leaching.

“If, in the future it does show that we need to add a groundwater mediation piece to this, we will!”

Adding a liner after-the-fact could be difficult and expensive. The new clean-up project will take four years and cost 268-million dollars.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

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Coal Ash Contamination

  • 2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants flooded over nearby farmland and into the river. (Photo courtesy of the Tennessee Department Of Health)

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

Transcript

When a dam broke a year ago in Kingston,
Tennessee, the town experienced one
of the biggest environmental disasters
in US history. Billions of gallons
of waterlogged coal ash from a nearby
power plant streamed into the Emory
River. Tanya Ott reports
the contamination was even greater
than originally thought:

2.6 billion pounds of arsenic and other toxic pollutants. That’s how much
contamination flooded over nearby farmland and into the river.

That comes
from a report by the Environmental Integrity Project.

Eric Schaeffer is the
project’s Executive Director and a former official with the Environmental
Protection Agency. He says 2.6 billion pounds is more than the total
discharges from all U-S power plants last year.

“The toxic metals, once they get into the environment,
and especially once they get into sediment, are notoriously difficult to
clean up.”

Difficult and expensive. The Tennessee Valley Authority puts the price tag
at about a billion dollars.

The EPA was supposed to propose tougher
disposal standards for toxic ash by the end of 2009. But the agency delayed
that decision.

For The Environmental Report, Im Tanya Ott.

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The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez

  • A NOAA scientist surveying an oiled beach to assess the depth of oil penetration soon after the spill (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:

Transcript

Twenty years ago this week, an oil tanker ran aground on a rocky reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The Exxon Valdez spilled more than 11 million gallons of crude oil. It’s considered to be perhaps the biggest ecological disaster in US history. Ann Dornfeld has this look at how oil spill prevention and preparedness have changed in the two decades since Valdez:

The call came in just after midnight.

“Ah, evidently leaking some oil and we’re gonna be here for a while.”

Court records indicate Captain Joseph Hazelwood was likely drunk when the Exxon Valdez ran aground.

There was hardly any clean-up equipment on hand. No plan for action. The location was remote.

Oil polluted a stretch of Alaskan coastline the length of the entire west coast of the U.S. The oil killed fish, sea otters, harbor seals and an estimated quarter of a million birds. Today, there is still oil on some beaches.

Twenty years later, a cargo vessel has just reported a spill of 160
gallons of oil in Washington state’s Commencement Bay. Investigators
have filled the “Spill Situation Room” in the state Department of Ecology.

“Who’s responsible for actually maintaining
the bow thruster, when was the last time they performed maintenance on it?”

“You mean one of the staff on board?”

“Yeah.”

Spill Response Manager David Byers says coastal states learned a lesson from Exxon Valdez, and developed rapid response systems like this.

“We’ve got crews headed up in a helicopter to do on-
water observations, we’ve got response resources on the water headed out to do containment when we find the location of the oil.”

Byers says the state handles dozens of spills this size each year, making it somewhat of a well-oiled machine.

After the Exxon Valdez, the state of Washington put in place some tough prevention standards. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the state.

The court ruled the state was making safety demands of oil companies that only the federal government could make.

Mike Cooper is Chairman of the state’s Oil Spills Advisory Council. He says that ruling is one reason why small oil spills are common in Washington’s bays. He says other states have come up against the same restrictions.

“When the Massachusetts legislature passed strict laws,
the United States Coast Guard and the industry did the same thing that they did to the people of Washington state. They sued the people of the state of Massachusetts and said, ‘We’ll decide if industry has to pay.'”

The federal Oil Pollution Act did raise industry’s liability and the amount of federal money available in the event of a spill. It also requires oil tankers and barges in U.S. waters to be double-hulled by 2015. The Exxon Valdez’ single hull was easily gouged open when it ran aground.

Today, most U.S.-flagged tankers and barges are double-hulled. Most foreign tankers aren’t yet.

But there’s no law requiring a second hull on cargo ships. Bruce Wishart is Policy Director for People for Puget Sound. He says it’s cargo vessels that are most likely to spill oil.

“It’s commonly assumed that oil tankers pose the
single greatest threat in terms of an oil spill. There are actually many, many more cargo vessels plying our waters that pose a very significant risk simply because they carry a lot of fuel on board.”

In 2007, the cargo vessel Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into San Francisco Bay. Thousands of birds died, including endangered species. A fully-loaded cargo ship can contain 40 times more oil than what leaked from the Cosco Busan.

So, while oil tankers have become safer in the two decades since the Exxon Valdez, the nation’s waterways still remain at risk of a major spill.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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The Quicker, Oily Picker-Upper

  • MIT's oil-absorbing mesh towel (Photo courtesy of MIT)

Researchers say they’ve created a special
material that could be used to clean up oil spills
someday. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Researchers say they’ve created a special
material that could be used to clean up oil spills
someday. Rebecca Williams has more:

The researchers say it’s sort of a magic paper towel. It looks and feels like
paper. But it’s actually a membrane made out of really tiny wires woven
together.

It repels water completely but soaks up oil.

Francesco Stellacci is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He says the thin membrane can soak up to 20 times its weight in oil.

“We put it on top of a solution that contains both oil and water and the oil gets
absorbed quite readily.”

Stellacci says the material has the potential to help clean up oil spills. But he
says real world conditions are more complicated, so they’ll still need to run
tests outside the lab.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Nuke Plant Leaks Revealed

The nuclear industry is dealing with criticism over spills of a chemical called tritium. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee reports:

Transcript

The nuclear industry is dealing with criticism over spills of a chemical
called tritium. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee reports:


Federal regulators don’t require nuclear power plants to report what’s
considered minor tritium spills to the public. That’s despite the fact
tritium can make water radioactive, but some residents in Arizona,
Illinois and New York are furious. They’ve learned about tritium
spills… sometimes years later. Now, power plants want to change
course.


The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Ralph Andersen says the industry will
report even minor tritium leaks to the public.


“It’s appreciating the common sense issue that of course, neighbors
around a nuclear power plant want to be aware of emissions from the
plant, not just hear about it later or read about it in the paper.”


Federal regulators insist the public’s safe. Nuclear watchdog groups
remain worried, though. The agreement covers only nuclear plant
operators, not places that store tritium outside power stations.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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