Seeking solid ground: CU retests rejected sites

From the north, the turf-covered hill east of the John Twitty Energy Center is a little too high, the slopes a little too straight to be altogether natural. Viewed from the south, the hill — actually a landfill for the coal ash produced at the City Utilities plant — appears positively extraterrestrial.

Largely shielded from public view, the black and tan interior of the landfill looks like something photographed by the Mars rover. Tire tracks litter the alien landscape, left by trucks hauling in layer after layer of coal ash, slowly filling in the man-made crater with the power plant's waste.

In place since 1981, the landfill is perhaps two-thirds full — sometime within the next two decades, the grass cover will wrap all the way around the hill and City Utilities will have to start burying its coal ash somewhere else.

Utility administrators hope "somewhere else" will be relatively close by. For months, contractors and students from the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla have been crisscrossing CU's 800-acre property southwest of Springfield with probes and sensors, using sound waves and electrical current to map the rock and soil beneath.

Their goal is to find solid ground, free of the sinkholes and porous rock formations that could allow coal ash to contaminate the local water supply. When the preliminary pass wraps up, likely in the next few months, CU plans to zero in on the most promising 100-125 acres and conduct more detailed tests.

Whether the search will be successful — and more importantly, whether state regulators will agree with CU's findings — remains to be seen.

With the help of Springfield Rep. Lincoln Hough, the utility was able to side-step an initial step in the application process. But the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, which had jettisoned CU's earlier proposals due to the prevalence of sinkholes and other fragile underground features, still has the final say once CU completes its more detailed site investigation.

Local environmental activists — who worry that CU once again will find a way around state regulators — have tried to keep up the pressure, as well, by lobbying City Council and CU's board of directors to shut down the site study, which is expected to cost more than $5 million by the time it is complete.

"What we don't understand is why they're spending millions of dollars to do a detailed site investigation on sites that have already been denied by DNR as too dangerous," said Judy Dasovich, a local physician who chairs the White River Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Dasovich and other Sierra Club members point to a 2012 report from DNR that mentions numerous sinkholes and other examples of karst topography, a type of underground terrain marked by caves, cracks and porous rock that functions as an underground drainage system for the surrounding area.

"The potential to contaminate the groundwater aquifers in this geologic setting is high," according to the DNR report, which notes a proposed solid waste disposal facility on the property would be considered "as having a significant potential for catastrophic collapse."

"That's pretty damning, coming from an agency that generally doesn't deny anything," said Dasovich. "It's not just that there's karst, there's been actual, documented sinkhole collapses on this site ... There's just a lot of good science behind not putting a coal ash landfill where it has the potential to contaminate local groundwater."

"We don't deny the need for another disposal site," she said. "What we're asking is, dispose of it safely."

Justifying the expense

Despite the concerns raised in DNR's evaluation of the site, CU officials say they owe it to ratepayers to obtain a second, more detailed opinion.

"This site, we feel, is as feasible as any other," said CU Project Manager Roddy Rogers. "The alternative would be to haul it somewhere, probably (25-30 miles) north of here."

The cost of trucking the coal ash to another site is estimated to be $100 million or more over the life of the plant, Rogers said. "And that figure doesn't include the costs of building any additional roads and bridges or improving those."

The $5 million site investigation currently underway is a reasonable investment, he said, when the alternative is so costly.

"Most of us would spend $5 to save $100," he said. "And environmentally, it's the possibility of having one footprint instead of initiating another one somewhere else."

Rogers said the more detailed analysis will give CU and state regulators the best possible information with which to make a decision, whether the results favor the utility or not.

"This type of investigation, you don't know what's there until you get there. But that's the intent," he said, adding that CU is keeping DNR "in the loop" as the investigation proceeds. "We've been told we need to do a super-investigation and that's what we're trying to do."

Rogers, who was manager of water resources at CU before taking over his current assignment, said the utility is committed to "doing the right thing and the best thing" as it seeks a new storage facility.

"If this is not feasible environmentally or economically, we're willing to walk away ...," he said. "We are the water utility as well as the electric utility. If we compromise our water supply, there won't be anybody around that needs our power."

What could go wrong

When it comes to coal ash, what constitutes "safe" has been a matter of debate.

A general term for the leftover material generated by burning coal, "coal ash" encompasses a range of materials including "fly ash," "bottom ash" and others collected from various points in the power generation process. Nationwide, coal-fired power plants produce more than 100 million tons of the stuff a year.

The composition of the ash can vary based on the type of coal burned, but it typically contains at least trace amounts of "contaminants like mercury, cadmium and arsenic associated with cancer and various other serious health effects," according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A frequently asked questions document on the EPA's website notes that "without proper protections, these contaminants can leach into groundwater and can potentially migrate to drinking water sources, posing significant public health concerns."

Even so, about 40 percent of the coal ash generated nationwide is repurposed for "beneficial uses" approved by the EPA, including as an additive in concrete or as fill for empty coal mines.

New EPA rules for coal ash storage released in December stopped short of classifying coal ash as hazardous waste, instead lumping it in the same category as common household garbage.

Environmental advocates who had pushed for more stringent regulation say the danger shouldn't be dismissed.

"It's not cheap to be sick" or to clean up a spill, Dasovich said. "Those are all costs borne by the community, by all of us ... So we would rather see a disaster averted."

She and other critics point to catastrophic failures at other coal ash storage facilities as examples of what can go wrong.

In early 2014, a break in a drainage pipe at a closed Duke Energy power plant in North Carolina sent tens of thousands of tons of stored coal ash into the nearby Dan River, polluting the water for miles.

In 2008, the failure of an earthen dam at a Tennessee Valley Authority ash dump sent more than a billion gallons of coal ash slurry (ash mixed with water) flowing out of on-site storage ponds into nearby rivers. The ashy flood covered an estimated 300 acres and destroyed 40 homes. Cleanup costs have exceeded $1 billion.

Rogers said the storage facilities that failed in those cases aren't comparable to what CU has planned. In North Carolina and Tennessee, the failures occurred at large coal ash ponds containing a watery mixture of ash that was open to the air.

"What we're wanting to expand here is dry ash storage," he said.

Although CU operates a few small containment ponds at JTEC, ash is stored there only temporarily. The ash is regularly dredged and spread in the landfill, where it is packed into a solid mass.

Even if a breach did occur, the hardened, dry ash would not flow like the watery mix from the large ash ponds that failed, he said.

Even so, Sierra Club members note that failures already have occurred at the power plant.

The 2012 DNR report mentions "at least five catastrophic sinkhole collapses … within JTEC fly-ash storage basins" as well as "two small collapses that were induced by exploration work at the landfill site."

Most of the collapses were reported more than 20 years ago and were remedied with no negative effect on the environment, Rogers said.

"We had some karst features that we mitigated in our ash ponds that occurred when we cleaned them up," Rogers said.

The other collapse, in an undeveloped portion of the dry ash landfill, also was repaired using DNR-approved techniques for filling sinkholes, he said. "You eliminate the possibility for collapse."

At odds over "the best option"

Due to the new EPA rules, any new landfill CU builds at the JTEC site or elsewhere will be held to a higher standard.

The current coal ash dump has a clay liner beneath the ash and is capped by a layer of soil and grass meant to cause water to run off rather than seep into the ash. Additional features are in place to collect any water that does leach through, Rogers said.

Under the EPA rules released in December, new landfills must be lined with synthetic material in addition to clay.

"Whatever we engineer and design will have multiple redundancies," Rogers said. "It's truly belt and suspenders on top of belt and suspenders on top of belt and suspenders."

Nicole Moran, an environmental scientist in EPA's Region 7 office, said the new requirements are similar to the standards for municipal solid waste landfills.

During a March 31 presentation hosted by the Sierra Club, Moran noted that the new rules discourage coal ash landfills in areas marked by unstable terrain, but they don't outright ban them.

"The best option is to not site in karst areas," she said. But if CU or another utility is set on doing so, they'll need to have a professional engineer certify the site as safe and demonstrate that adequate steps have been taken to prevent a collapse.

The new rules also require CU to install a system of groundwater monitoring wells to test for contamination near its existing landfills and any expansions. Test results, along with other information, must be posted online for the public to see.

Rogers said CU tested the groundwater near the current landfill for several years after it was built but stopped, with DNR's blessing, about 25 years ago after no contamination was found.

CU agreed to restart the monitoring program in order to secure a permit amendment from DNR in 2012. Renewed testing has yet to begin — CU spokesman Joel Alexander said the utility is still working with DNR to design a system that will gather information at the necessary depths and locations.

"We want to make sure we get the exact profile of what's going on out there, not just a profile that's beneficial to us," he said. "We want a true picture of what's going on."

Second opinion won't change first impression

Dasovich said the Sierra Club looks forward to renewed groundwater testing that could show whether or not the existing landfill has caused contamination. But from the Sierra Club's point of view, nothing CU might find as it maps the underground terrain will make a new landfill acceptable.

"There is no data out there that is going to convince us that will be safe, because the scientists at the DNR have already told us (it's not)," she said. "As far as we're concerned they're wasting time and money to investigate a site that's proven to be dangerous."

While Rogers has compared the more detailed site investigation to seeking a second opinion from a mechanic or doctor, Dasovich likened it to someone with terminal cancer trying to prove their health with additional testing.

"There's no way you're going to make me believe that (cancer) is not a problem for you," she said.

Dasovich said the Sierra Club will continue to oppose the proposed landfill however they can, but the tools available are limited.

Club members had hoped the new EPA rules would offer some help. But while the document released in December sets minimum guidelines for coal ash disposal — along with strongly discouraging landfills in karst areas — the provisions for enforcing the new rules are lacking.

Due to a quirk in federal law, EPA's decision to regulate coal ash as solid waste means the federal government can't directly enforce the new rules, which are "self-implementing," meaning it's essentially up to utilities to follow them. The EPA would have been allowed to punish rule-breakers if it had opted to classify coal ash as hazardous waste, but that also would have prevented utilities from selling the waste for so-called beneficial use.

The rules do include an option for citizens to try to force compliance if a utility is not fulfilling all of the EPA requirements or is endangering the community. But Dasovich said the process, which depends on privately-funded lawsuits, doesn't amount to much.

"It puts citizens like us in a position of having to be David with a few stones fighting against Goliath all the time," she said. "We don't have the money and power like they do."

In the meantime, she said, the Sierra Club will continue to try to convince officials and the public to change CU's direction.

"I want the coal ash that is produced taken care of safely," she said. "But the main point is we need to get away from coal ash altogether. Let's quit producing toxins we may or may not be able to store safely."