Coal ash industry enlists EPA to quash tighter state regulatory proposals

The coal ash industry has been able to call upon the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy to respond to proposals from states for stricter regulation of coal combustion wastes, according to EPA e-mails released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The messages portray federal agencies enlisted as lobbying arms for industry. EPA is now belatedly wrestling with whether to classify coal combustion wastes, principally coal ash, as a hazardous waste following the disastrous coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee in late 2008. In the absence of federal regulation, states have struggled with how to handle the more than 125 million tons of fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag, and flue gas desulfurization gypsum generated by coal-fired plants each year. In arguing against federal regulation, industry has maintained that state regulation is best. Yet e-mails obtained by PEER under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that industry worked in concert with EPA to counter state proposals for stricter regulation, including: * Efforts in California to keep fly ash out of school construction in order to prevent mercury exposure of children; * Legislation in Maryland to prohibit use of coal ash in agriculture or as land reclamation. This 2008 bill generated an "URGENT' alert in which an Energy Department official dismissed the legislation as a "knee-jerk response to the contamination that has occurred" at a gravel mine; and * A decision by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources to treat all coal ash as a waste, despite claims that "beneficial reuse" should be exempt.