U.S. power companies may face billions of dollars a year in new costs after last week’s coal-sludge spill in east Tennessee if the accident results in regulating their wastes as toxic.
The accident that unleashed a billion-gallon outpouring from a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant Dec. 22 may revive efforts in Washington to tighten rules on so-called fly ash that’s laden with heavy metals, and other waste from coal-fired generators. The proposals stalled during the eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration.
Increased regulation would bring costs to upgrade or close more than 600 landfills and waste ponds at 440 plants nationwide. While the Environmental Protection Agency put the price tag at $1 billion a year in 2000, power generators predict the cost would be as high as $5 billion, Jim Roewer, executive director of the industry-funded Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, said in a telephone interview. Power generators and ash recyclers predicted a push in Washington for more rules.
“There have been a handful of smaller spills over the years, but nothing like this one,” David Goss, director of the American Coal Ash Association in Aurora, said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I expect the spill will raise a lot of questions about how coal ash gets stored. We could see new regulations at the federal level.”
The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a hearing Jan. 8 on the Tennessee Valley Authority and the ash spill, the panel said Wednesday in an e-mailed statement.
The spill at the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant, 35 miles southwest of Knoxville, deluged more than 300 acres of rural Roane County, destroying three homes and damaging 42 other properties. Authorities warned residents against using private wells or touching the ash after tests found levels of arsenic and other metals above drinking-water standards.
