“We don’t have any intentions of doing it now,” he added, referring to coal ash disposal at the planned landfill. “But like I say, that is a recommended method of disposal for the coal ash.”

Meanwhile, at the company’s headquarters in Houston, Texas, top Waste Management executives have identified coal ash as a “big growth” item for their company.

David Steiner, the company’s chief executive officer, recently used that term in speaking with reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek about a pending change in federal coal ash regulations likely to make coal-fired power plants bury their ash waste only in engineered landfills.

“The utilities see the regulations coming, so we are already starting to get a lot of coal ash,” the magazine quoted Steiner as saying.

Harold Holmes, the chairman of the Randolph County Board of Commissioners, initially said on Friday that he understood coal ash would not be acceptable in the landfill designed primarily for “household waste.” But he acknowledged after speaking with Essick that it might play a minor role in the waste company’s operations at the new landfill, if the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources approved ash for burial there.