Legal Deadline Set for EPA’s Coal Ash Rule

January 29, 2014-by Sonal Patel in Power Magazine

Coal ash and sludge lagoons, like those in the foreground of this picture at Duke Energy's Gibson Station near Princeton, IN have gone largely unregulated until now when EPA, under a legal settlement is required to issue rules for regulation of the hazardous material by December 19 of this year. File Photo © BlairPhotoEVV

Coal ash and sludge lagoons, like those in the foreground of this picture at Duke Energy’s Gibson Station near Princeton, IN have gone largely unregulated until now when EPA, under a legal settlement is required to issue rules for regulation of the hazardous material by December 19 of this year. File Photo © BlairPhotoEVV

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must issue a proposed revision of its Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Subtitle D rules regulating coal combustion residuals no later than Dec. 19, 2014, under a consent decree reached between the agency and environmental groups that was filed in federal court today.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Sept. 30, 2013, granted summary judgement to at least 11 environmental groups and on Oct. 29 required the EPA to submit a schedule for final agency action on the RCRA coal ash rule by Jan. 29, 2014. The environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, had sued the EPA in April 2012 to address what they said are the “serious and widespread risks that unsafe disposal of coal combustion waste or ‘coal ash’ poses to human health and environment.” The EPA’s failure to act on “well-documented risks associated with irresponsible disposal of coal ash” violates RCRA, the groups argued.

The EPA in June 2010 published alternative proposed coal ash rules under RCRA in large part due to the December 2008 failure of a coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA’s) Kingston coal-fired power plant. That disaster released 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash that inundated several homes and contaminated the Emory River in Tennessee. Continue reading page 2 below…

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *