Tag Archives: coal combustion residuals

On Monday, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality issued determinations with respect to six Duke Energy coal plants, requiring that Duke close coal combustion residual surface impoundments at the plants by excavating and removing all coal ash from the impoundments.  DEQ did so notwithstanding that the impoundments all received “low-risk” classifications by DEQ.

According to Greenwire (subscription required), the directives will increase the cost of complying with CCR requirements at these plants by $4B-$5B.… More

On Friday, EPA finally released its final rule regulating coal combustion residuals.  Facility owners breathed a sigh of relief, as EPA chose to regulate under Subtitle D of RCRA, rather than under the cradle-to-grave provisions of Subtitle C.  Given the extensive beneficial reuse of CCRs, EPA clearly made the right call.

The rule is obviously lengthy.  EPA provided a Fact Sheet to summarize the rule,… More

Last Friday, EPA announced release of its draft proposal to revise the effluent guidelines and standards for the steam electric power generating industry, last revised in 1982.  The proposal was in conformance with a litigation settlement with environmental groups, which also calls for a final rule by May 22, 2014.

The proposed rule actually sets out four different regulatory options, and they are sufficiently complicated that EPA’s Fact Sheet on the proposal does not even attempt to summarize them. … More

I have had a number of clients ask me recently about the status of EPA’s efforts to regulate coal combustion residuals under RCRA. It turns out that some environmental groups have been asking themselves the same question. Being environmental groups, however, they did more than ask about it. They sued.

As most readers know, EPA published two separate proposals for regulating coal ash – one under Subtitle C and one under Subtitle D – on June 21,… More

In Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman is sentenced to two years on a chain gang for cutting the heads off of municipal parking meters.  The Mingo Logan Coal Company wants to cut the top off of 3.5 square miles of West Virginia mountaintop. This week, EPA gave the company’s Spruce No. 1 Mine
proposal the death penalty, using its authority under § 404(c) of the Clean Water Act to veto a permit issued by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007. … More

Environmentalists have been pushing for years to overturn the Bevill Amendment and get coal combustion residuals (CCR) regulated as a hazardous waste. The failure of an impoundment at the TVA facility in Kingston, Tennessee, in 2008 almost guaranteed that EPA would do something to regulate CCR. Like Hamlet, however, EPA seems to be having trouble making up its mind. Earlier this week, EPA announced two different potential regulatory approaches,… More