Ron Barnett

rbarnett@greenvillenews.com

A private company has entered into a preliminary agreement to undertake “a large disposal project” that could dump hundreds of thousands of tons of coal ash in Pickens County, according to the state Department of Health and Environmental Control, which has approved landfill construction plans.

The magnitude of the project would require “a significant increase” in the 70,500 tons per year the company was permitted to handle when it received approval for an unlined landfill eight years ago, a DHEC spokesman said.

DHEC has asked for more information from the company and doesn’t know where the coal ash would be coming from or how much would be coming.

An attorney for the landfill property owner, MRR Pickens, LLC, declined to comment.

But county officials who have fielded calls from concerned people who live and work nearby, are distressed about the possibility of contamination from toxic heavy metals found in coal ash, a byproduct of coal-fired power plants.

Coal ash contains contaminants such as arsenic, lead, mercury, selenium, cadmium, and chromium, and has been linked to increased risk of cancer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“The acceptance of coal ash in our county is just not acceptable,” said County Councilman Neil Smith, who represents the area where the landfill is to be located. “And potential health problems can’t be offset by the influence and the money of that industry.

“I’m upset about the state even allowing it.”

The 4.61-million cubic yard landfill is under construction at the intersection of State 93 and Cartee Road between Liberty and Easley and borders the Pickens County Commerce Park.

County officials said they had no idea that the company, which had entered into a development agreement with the county in 2007 to build a landfill for construction and demolition waste, was planning to accept coal ash until they started hearing complaints from residents.

“The question I have is why wasn’t there a public comment period on that that we had to go through,” Smith said.

DHEC spokesman Jim Beasley said public notice will be given prior to the agency making a final decision on MRR’s request to increase the volume of waste it can take.

But DHEC already approved the company’s request to install a synthetic liner, which would allow it to take in coal ash, as long as its level of toxicity doesn’t exceed certain parameters, he said.

At the time of the 2007 agreement, the county’s landfill was nearing capacity, and the idea was for the private landfill to take over handling nontoxic waste such as wood and concrete scrap. The company was to begin construction within 30 days of receiving approval from DHEC.

But in a meeting with the Pickens County Planning Commission in January of this year, representatives of the company said they had held off developing the landfill because of the recession and now felt the time was right to move ahead with it.

They said “nothing had changed” about their plans since the 2007 agreement and that the company had donated 160 acres of the 443-acre tract to the county for use as a recreational area, under the terms of the agreement, according to minutes of the meeting.

There was no mention of coal ash in the minutes, although one commission member asked if asbestos would be allowed in the landfill and was told it could be placed in a part of the facility dedicated for that purpose.

Weldon Clark, vice chairman of the Planning Commission, said the commission gave the OK for the landfill project to proceed because it was within the county’s guidelines for development.

“Basically the only thing we’re charged with is enforcing the development standard ordinance,” he said. “So we didn’t find anything they were doing that was opposed to the development standard ordinance.

“As far as coal ash goes, depending on what goes in it, it can be a very benign substance," he added. "If you have some heavy metals in it, it can be a problem.”

Last December, the EPA issued a ruling on coal ash that stopped short of labeling it as a hazardous material and left it up to states to enforce the new regulations.

Coal ash could be disposed of in an unlined, or Class 2, landfill under DHEC regulations that went into effect in 1996, according to agency documents, but the state now requires linings, Beasley said.

Some coal ash can meet the less toxic Class 2 requirements “but must be demonstrated to do so prior to disposal in this or any Class 2 landfill,” he said.

The state environmental agency received a request from MRR on March 31 to modify its 2007 permit which had never been used, by adding a synthetic liner system “so the facility could potentially receive (less toxic) Class 2 coal ash from power generating utilities,” Beasley said.

“Any waste received by the facility must meet Class 2 specifications even with the liner installed,” he said. “Installation of the liner does not allow the facility to take (more toxic) Class 3 solid waste.”

He didn’t know how it would be determined whether the coal ash that would go into this landfill meets the Class 2 standard.

Frank Holleman, a senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center who has been active in battling the power industry over coal ash in the Carolinas, said the toxicity of coal ash can be determined in a lab, but it’s questionable how the public could be assured that what goes into the landfill meets that lower toxicity standard.

“Even though it’s scientifically possible to do it, the question is are they doing it adequately,” he said. “It’s almost always done by paid consultant rather than independent scientists.”

Holleman said he didn’t know anything about the Pickens landfill, but experience with others around the Southeast gives evidence that the public has reason to be concerned.

“These facilities can be done well and they can be done badly,” he said.

SCE&G, for example, has a coal ash landfill outside Columbia and there have been no complaints or problems.

But a TVA landfill in Alabama “has been a source of constant problems."

And in some cases the state and local governments “get left holding the bag,” he said.

“Water contaminated with coal ash pollutants has been known to move more than a mile from coal ash dump sites,” according to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Southeast Coal Ash website. “Dry landfills also pose dangers to drinking water and aquatic life, and damage air quality when the fine dust from these containment facilities is blown into surrounding neighborhoods.”

Amy Armstrong, an attorney for the South Carolina Environmental Law Project, said MRR, which stands for Materials Recovery and Recycling, tried to open landfills in Laurens and Marlboro counties but couldn’t get permits approved. MRR Pickens is a division of MRR Southern, LLC, based in Raleigh.

The one in Marlboro County would have had capacity to take in a quarter million tons of waste annually.

In that county, residents waged a public campaign against the plan and MRR sued them for defamation. A federal judge threw out the lawsuit, saying the company hadn’t given evidence that the citizens group knowingly made false statements and did so out of malice.

Armstrong cited a DHEC report that showed that South Carolina has more than enough capacity to handle all its own waste.

No coal ash from Duke Energy is destined for any landfill in Pickens County, according to company spokeswoman Danielle Peoples.

Duke, which has two retired coal-fired plants in the state, sends some ash to a site in Homer, Ga., and announced plans last week to store 2.2 million tons of coal ash in a lined landfill that would be on site at the W.S. Lee Station in Anderson County.

Opposition grows to proposed coal ash dump in Pickens County