Ron Barnett

rbarnett@greenvillenews.com

Whether the Pickens County Planning Commission’s suspension of a land use permit for a coal ash landfill near Liberty will stop it from coming "is not yet determined” because the company that wants to build the facility could appeal the action, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

As far as DHEC is concerned, the plan by Raleigh-based MRR Pickens, LLC meets the standards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and falls within the state guidelines for a Class 2 landfill, which handles non-toxic waste, a DHEC spokesman said in response to questions from The Greenville News.

Experts disagree on the potential danger of coal ash landfills.

John Daniels, chair of the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, says the toxic materials in coal ash are at such low concentrations that they’re not hazardous, unless they leach into the drinking water supply.

“If you’ve got ash going to a facility that is lined, those residents living nearby have got nothing to fear,” he said.

His current research, funded by the Environmental Research and Education Foundation, focuses on reusing coal ash as a construction material and for other purposes by combining it with chemicals that make it water-repellent and environmentally safe.

Daniels also has received funding from Duke Energy and other power companies but said his research meets all ethical standards required by the university.

All scientific data corroborates the EPA’s finding that coal ash need not be treated as a hazardous waste but should be contained in lined landfills, he said.

Dennis Lemly, a research fish biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Piedmont Aquatic Research Laboratory in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, vehemently disagrees.

He presented evidence to the EPA in 2010 pointing out a 20 percent failure rate of synthetic liners in preventing the leaching of selenium, a trace element that’s toxic to aquatic life. That suggests that liners are ineffective in protecting against other harmful compounds, he said.

Yet in issuing its rule on coal ash disposal four years later, the EPA dismissed his warnings.

He attributes the agency’s decision on “industry control over politics and environmental regulations. Forget the science and evidence.”

Daniels, however, says coal ash is nontoxic, based on its chemical composition in dry form.

The threshold for toxicity of one of the elements in coal ash, chromium, for example, is 5,000 micrograms per liter, he said. He’s never seen a sample of coal ash that meets that limit for chromium, nor are any other heavy metals above the acceptable range, he said.

Toxins could reach higher concentrations in groundwater, which is why coal ash shouldn’t be put in an unlined landfill, he said. It also must be handled with care when transported to keep coal dust from getting into the air in too high of concentrations, he said.

But he argues that it’s no more toxic than other dry materials that are commonly transported, such as cement.

Other experts point to the dangers of living near unlined coal ash impoundments.

“If eaten, drunk or inhaled, these toxicants can cause cancer and nervous system impacts such as cognitive deficits, developmental delays and behavioral problems,” a group called Physicians for Social Responsibility says on its website. “They can also cause heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, birth defects, and impaired bone growth in children.”

County officials have vowed to fight the landfill plan in the courts if necessary and have determined that it violates the county’s own solid waste plan.

Coal ash contains toxic substances such as lead and arsenic, but the EPA in December 2014 deemed that coal ash from power plants can be treated as non-hazardous industrial waste rather than as a hazardous material.

That put the onus on states to oversee coal ash disposal safety. DHEC views the type of coal ash planned for the Pickens County landfill the same as construction waste that is put in unlined "Class 2" landfills in the potential for environmental harm, although the EPA won't allow it in unlined landfills.

DHEC modified the permit for the company to allow it to install a liner to meet the EPA rule for coal ash.

“The MRR Class 2 permit, as with any other Class 2 landfill, allows the disposal of many different waste streams, including coal ash, as long as the waste has been proven to meet Class 2 criteria,” DHEC spokesman Jim Beasley said. “The question pending before DHEC is not whether they can accept Class 2 coal ash, but how much can they accept.”

An attorney for MRR, and the company official who submitted the request to DHEC to increase its annual limit of 70,500 tons, have not responded to multiple requests for comment from The Greenville News.

The company also still has not answered DHEC’s questions about where the coal ash would be coming from and how it would ensure that it meets the Class 2 standard.

The company received approval in 2007 to build a landfill for construction and demolition waste, which is considered non-toxic, but never built the facility because of the economic crisis that followed. It received approval from the county Planning Commission in January 2015 to proceed with building a landfill on State 93 between Liberty and Easley, with company officials making no mention of coal ash, county officials said.

A few months later, it got approval to install a liner in order to be able to accept coal ash.

“We know from experience that some coal combustion by-products, ash included, may meet Class 2 criteria,” Beasley said.

That’s why DHEC felt no need to notify county officials or conduct public hearings before allowing coal ash to the site – because it was already an approved material under the state guidelines as long as it meets Class 2 standards, he said.

“DHEC does not typically public notice minor modifications to existing permits,” Beasley said. “MRR’s proposal to install a protective liner is more environmentally protective and beyond what is required for Class 2 landfills.

Lemly, the USDA biologist, scoffs at DHEC’s assertion that it will allow only coal ash that meets the same standard of toxicity as construction and demolition waste.

“All coal ash is toxic to fish and wildlife – period,” he told The Greenville News.

He said there's no safe way to landfill coal ash.

"Coal ash has to be locked in a concrete matrix to isolate it and slow leaching of pollutants," he said. "Perhaps the best way is in highway paving concrete. It spreads the coals out across long distances, and dilutes point sources of pollutants."

The EPA, however, says a liner is an effective way to protect groundwater from toxic substances in coal ash.

In Pickens County's case, that essentially turns a Class 2 landfill into a Class 3 landfill, which the county doesn’t allow, County Councilman Neil Smith argues.

“It basically means they have to reclassify a Class 3 to a Class 2 and say, 'oh don’t worry about the coal ash. It’s not going to contaminate anything but just in case we’re going to have them go ahead and put in a liner.'”

Chuck Leavell, famed musician and founder of one of the world’s most popular environmentalist websites, the Mother Nature Network, said it sounds like the company and authorities involved have been “less than forthcoming” about what’s being planned for the site.

“Give the people the full truth here,” he said. “The public should certainly be privy to know what is going into the Earth.”

“To me, it just points out the importance of moving as swiftly as we reasonably can to renewable fuels and away from fossils for our energy usage.”