Millions of tons of toxic coal ash is piling up in power plant ponds in 32 states, a situation the government has long recognized as a risk to human health and the environment but has done nothing about.
An Associated Press analysis of the most recent Energy Department data found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in surface ponds similar to one that ruptured last month in Tennessee. On Friday, a pond at a northeastern Alabama power plant spilled a different material.
Records indicate that states storing the most coal ash in ponds are Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Georgia and Alabama.
The man-made lagoons hold a mixture of the noncombustible ingredients of coal and the ash trapped by equipment designed to reduce air pollution from the power plants.
Over the years, the volume of waste has grown as demand for electricity increased and the federal government clamped down on emissions from power plants.
The AP's analysis found that in 2005, the most recent year data is available, 721 power plants generating at least 100 megawatts of electricity produced 95.8 million tons of coal ash. About 20 percent – or nearly 20 million tons – ended up in surface ponds. The remainder ends up in landfills, or is sold for use in concrete, among other uses.
The Environmental Protection Agency eight years ago said it wanted to set a national standard for ponds or landfills used to dispose of wastes produced from burning coal.
The agency has yet to act.
As a result, coal ash ponds are subject to less regulation than landfills accepting household trash, even though the industry's own estimates show that ash ponds contain tens of thousands of pounds of toxic heavy metals. The EPA estimates that about 300 ponds for coal ash exist nationwide.
Without federal guidelines, regulations of the ash ponds vary by state. Most lack liners and have no monitors to ensure that ash and its contents don't seep into underground aquifers.
"There has been zero done by the EPA," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W. Va., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Rahall pushed through legislation in 1980 directing the EPA to study how wastes generated at the nation's coal-fired power plants should be treated under federal law.
In both 1988 and 1993, the EPA decided that coal ash should not be regulated as a hazardous waste. The agency has also failed to take other steps to control how the waste is stored.
"Coal ash impoundments like the one in Tennessee have to be subject to federal regulations to ensure a basic level of safety for communities," Rahall said.
The Tennessee spill was at a Tennessee Valley Authority plant covered 300 acres in a slurry of coal ash and water, destroying homes and tainting waterways and soil with high levels of arsenic.
The utility reported a second leak Friday at a pond at a northeast Alabama power plant that was storing gypsum, a material trapped in air pollution control devices that is different from the sludge that spilled in Tennessee. Some of the gypsum reached a nearby creek before the leak was stopped.