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  4. Industry Fights Proposal to Regulate Coal Ash as Hazardous Waste

Industry Fights Proposal to Regulate Coal Ash as Hazardous Waste

Date: January 11, 2010

Source: News Room

Industries that reuse spent coal ash are urging the EPA to use its existing Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) enforcement authority to regulate waste ponds and landfills, rather than its proposed but controversial approach to regulate the ash as a hazardous waste subject to strict storage, handling and disposal requirements. Representatives of Separation Technologies, LLC, a company that provides technologies to reuse fly ash in concrete and the Gypsum Association, which uses washed gypsum from flu-gas desulfurization to replace virgin material in wall board, have met separately with EPA and White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) officials to push the idea.

Section 7003 of RCRA provides the EPA administrator with broad authority to issue unilateral administrative orders requiring facilities to take actions "as may be necessary" in the event that any waste poses an "imminent and substantial endangerment." The approach is an alternative to the agency's stalled controversial hybrid plan for addressing discarded coal ash as hazardous, subject to strict RCRA subtitle C handling and disposal rules, while waste material that is reused in concrete, dry wall or other safe beneficial uses be considered non-hazardous.

The Industry argues that such a hybrid approach would impose a stigma on the recycled coal waste, leaving it vulnerable to litigation and prompting companies to stop supplying ash for use in the material, a significantly cheaper disposal option than landfilling or storing the ash.

EPA's Lisa Jackson, who had promised to issue a proposal by year-end, had to delay action in the face of industry resistance. On Jan. 7 she told the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) that the agency's "first priority is to ensure" the safety of coal waste impoundments to prevent a repeat of the December 2008 ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) plant, while also promoting beneficial reuse.

Many environmentalists oppose regulating coal ash under less-stringent RCRA subtitle D rules, preferred by states and industry, because subtitle D rules are unenforceable at the federal level and would create major permitting uncertainty.

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