“We now have a lot more information than we did a year ago,” Surovell said last week. “We know now that the extent of the groundwater pollution is more significant than anybody realized a year ago.”

That new information, however, has not altered the DEQ’s permit timetable. A public hearing on a solid waste permit to close the Possum Point ponds, where the ash is being consolidated into a single pit with a partial clay liner, is scheduled for later this month.

The SELC and other environmental groups say DEQ is pressing ahead without enough detailed information about each site, such as, for example, that one of the Chesterfield ash ponds sits in the former channel of the James River and the ash is already sitting in groundwater.

“There’s no reasonable dispute that the ash is in contact with groundwater,” said Buppert, the SELC attorney. “What we’re telling DEQ is that’s not going to work here. ... We’ve gone out there looking for problems, looking for leaks, looking for places where contaminated groundwater is making it into surface water. I don’t think DEQ had done that kind of investigation at this site or most of the other sites. ... Ambient water monitoring out in the river channel is not likely to find these problems. We think it should compel them to require a solution that’s not cap-in-place in Chesterfield.”