Un gros déversement prend de l'expansion

La centrale Kingston au début du nettoyage. Photo: Penny

Un des plus gros désastres environnementaux en volume aux États-Unis prend de plus en plus d'ampleur, grâce aux humains qui n'osent pas officiellement déclarer les cendres qui viennent de la combustion du charbon comme toxiques, et qui insistent pour partager le cadeau empoissonné avec ses voisins.

Aux États-Unis, une grande part de l'électricité est faite en brûlant du charbon dans des centrales électriques: ces centrales sont souvent près des rivières car elles demandent beaucoup d'eau, et beaucoup d'espace pour entreposer les cendres. Depuis que les lois environnementales exigent que les cheminées crachent de la fumée propre, les "scrubbers" qui filtrent les produits toxiques de la fumée doivent être nettoyés, et ces restes, avec les cendres, doivent être entreposés en quelque part. Comme les particules sont très fines, on y ajoute de l'eau pour que ce soit plus gérable, et les "boues" sont versées dans des étangs de sédimentation. Le solide va dans le fond, et l'eau flotte en surface pour éventuellement retourner dans la rivière la plus près.

Mais voilà. Puisque la loi du moins dispendieux règne toujours, les murs de ces étangs de sédimentation, faits avec d'autres sédiments, cèdent parfois. C'est ce qui est arrivé à la centrale de Kingston, au Tennessee, l'an passé (2008), 3 jours avant Noël. On ramasse encore le désastre à la petite cuillère à ce jour. Ce qui sort de la rivière Emory est envoyé par train et par camion à qui veut bien recevoir les boues de cendres, le mercure et l'arsenic compris. Trois états différents reçoivent ce cadeau, 6 sites d'entreposage de déchêts. L'un d'eux, à Uniontown, en Alabama, par exemple, est maintenant pris avec les eaux de lixiviation. Il pleut beaucoup dans cette partie de l'Amérique: l'hiver, c'est 25 pouces de pluie entre novembre et février, ce qui fait que le dépotoir doit vivre avec jusqu'à 100,000 gallons d'eau contaminée par jour.

Ces eaux contaminées sont traitées par des usines de traitement des eaux usées de villes avoisinantes. Mais bien sûr, ces eaux usées une fois traitées sont déversées dans le cours d'eau le plus près, ce qui soulève souvent un tollé dans la population. En panique, on cherche d'autres usines de traitement qui veulent dépanner, mais qui n'ont pas toujours les permis requis, avouent même les autorités environnementales de l'état concerné.

Personne ne veut parler du problème de se débarasser des cendres ou des eaux contaminées qui viennent des sites d'enfouissement (comprendre dépotoirs). Moi, tout ce que je comprends, c'est qu'en bout de ligne, c'est toujours une rivière ou un cours d'eau qui écope.Boues de cendres qui sont toujours au fond de la rivière Emory. Photo: TVA

"Disposal of spilled coal ash a long, winding trip

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — More than a year after a Tennessee coal ash spill created one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind in U.S. history, the problem is seeping into several other states. It began Dec. 22, 2008, when a retaining pond burst at a coal-burning power plant, spilling 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash across 300 acres into the Emory River and an upscale shoreline community near Knoxville. It was enough ash to cover a square mile five feet deep.

While the Tennessee Valley Authority's cleanup has removed much of the ash from the river, the arsenic- and mercury-laced muck or its watery discharge has been moving by rail and truck through three states to at least six different sites. Some of it may end up as far away as Louisiana.

At every stop along the route, new environmental concerns pop up. The coal-ash muck is laden with heavy metals linked to cancer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering declaring coal ash hazardous. "I'm really concerned about my health," said retiree James Gibbs, 53, who lives near a west-central Alabama landfill that is taking the ash. "I want to plant a garden. I'm concerned about it getting in the soil." Gibbs said that since last summer there has been a "bad odor, like a natural gas odor."

After the spill, the TVA started sending as many as 17,000 rail carloads of ash almost 350 miles south to the landfill in Uniontown, Ala. At least 160 rail shipments have gone out from the cleanup site, said TVA spokeswoman Barbara Martocci.
Since the EPA approved that plan, unusually heavy rain — including about 25 inches from November through February — has forced the landfill to deal with up to 100,000 gallons a day of tainted water. The landfill operators first sent it to wastewater treatment plants — a common way that landfills deal with excess liquid — in two nearby Alabama cities, Marion and Demopolis.

After what the EPA calls unrelated problems with ammonia in Marion, the landfill in January started using a commercial wastewater treatment plant in Mobile, Ala., 500 miles from the original spill. A month ago, however, after a public outcry about discharging it into Mobile Bay, that company refused to take more of the landfill water. A private treatment facility in Cartersville, Ga., also briefly took some of the befouled liquid in February, although Georgia environmental officials said Friday the company did not have a required state permit. Hi-Tech Water Treatment Services stopped accepting wastewater from the Alabama landfill, manager Amalia Cox said, after becoming "concerned about payments and the publicity."

In a landfill management plan presented to Alabama environmental officials, tanker trucks could haul the dirty water to a non-hazardous waste disposal site in Louisiana and to a public wastewater plant in Mississippi. The plan also says there are "negotiations underway" on taking it to an unspecified facility in Georgia.

Neither the TVA, the companies hired to take the ash, nor environmental regulators want to discuss the disposal problems. TVA's coal ash cleanup manager, Steve McCracken, and agency spokeswoman Martocci referred disposal questions to Knoxville, Tenn.-based contractor Phillips & Jordan. So did the owners of the 977-acre landfill, Perry-Uniontown Ventures and Perry County Associates. Phillips & Jordan, which operates the Alabama landfill with a subsidiary, Phill-Con Services, has a $95 million disposal contract with TVA. The operators, who are in a financial dispute with the landfill owners, referred questions about the ash water to a Nashville public relations firm, McNeely, Pigott and Fox.

In a statement issued through the PR firm, Phill-Con Services president Eddie Dorsett said the landfill had received about 1.4 million tons of TVA's coal ash with another 1.6 million tons projected for delivery. Dorsett declined to answer questions about where the ash water is being taken for treatment or any problems it may have caused elsewhere. In a letter to Alabama environmental officials, the landfill operators said they are trying to reduce the excess wastewater, partly by using lime and soil to solidify it. They also said TVA is making new efforts to "minimize moisture in the ash waste or to better bind up the moisture in the ash waste." TVA's McCracken said he was unaware of any new effort to further dry the dredged ash.
"We are not planning to do anything different," McCracken said.

Federal and state environmental regulators have been only minimally involved with disposal of the landfill wastewater. Even though coal ash contains toxic materials, it isn't considered hazardous waste. EPA officials late last year delayed a decision whether to propose reclassifying coal ash as hazardous. Doing so would limit where it could be sent for disposal, possibly increasing the projected $1.2 billion cleanup cost for TVA ratepayers and affecting the ability to recycle the ash into cement and building materials.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management, which is paid $1 for each ton of the coal ash, monitors the landfill and has found no rules violations involving its excess water, spokesman Scott Hughes said. He said there are no restrictions on where the landfill sends the drained water, even to other states, as long as recipients have proper permits to treat it. In Demopolis, about 20 miles from Uniontown, officials failed to renew their wastewater treatment operating permit but the wastewater plant has continued receiving the landfill's drained fluids while operating under a special state order.

Hughes said Thursday that new orders propose additional monitoring of the wastewater at the landfill and allow Demopolis to accept it. If arsenic and other pollutant concentration levels meet standards, he said, there is no limit to how much landfill wastewater that Demopolis can take. He said Demopolis is the only treatment plant in Alabama currently taking the landfill wastewater. An attorney for the Demopolis wastewater system, Woodford "Woody" Dinning Jr., said the shipments are being tested on arrival.

David Ludder, Tallahassee, Fla.-based environmental attorney who represents Gibbs and other neighbors, said, "ADEM recovers a good bit of money off that coal ash. They get a fee for every ton of ash that gets disposed of there. EPA has a vested interest because they have to get the spill cleaned up in Tennessee and they can't do it without a place to put the ash."

Excerpts of article written by Bill Poovey of the Associated Press here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hJM1K4-QQjlGMxdTD0K7h3uWbo-AD9E8LRU00