Watchdogs: Power-plant waste dumps present 'extraordinary' cancer threat

Power-plant waste dumps like the one at Northeastern Power Co. outside Hometown pose an “extraordinary” cancer threat for nearby residents and should be better regulated by the government. So warn three national watchdog groups – Earthjustice, the Environmental Integrity Project and the Clean Air Task Force -- as well as the Tamaqua, Pa.-based Army for a Clean Environment.

The groups recently obtained an unreleased draft summary of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assessment that found the cancer risk from drinking groundwater contaminated with arsenic from such dumps can be as high as 1 in 100 – 10,000 times greater than allowed by EPA’s regulatory goals. Besides arsenic, coal combustion waste is also typically contaminated with cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury, as well as radioactive elements – all known or suspected carcinogens.

The problem caused by such pollution is potentially enormous, as coal-fired power plants annually produce about 129 million tons of the waste, which is being dumped in about 600 locations across the country. Meanwhile, utility companies are planning to build more than 150 new coal-fired power plants in the United States by 2030. Unless EPA takes steps to protect the public, the watchdogs say, environmental contamination from coal combustion waste dumps will worsen.

"Coal combustion waste currently disposed without adequate safeguards poses an imminent and substantial endangerment to health and the environment in dozens of communities throughout the country," says Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. "EPA has made no effort to protect the public against these pollution sources for over seven years. We believe it is time to act."

EPA acknowledges that coal ash landfills and surface impoundments have contaminated water in at least 23 states, and at levels exceeding federal drinking-water standards in Indiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. The agency also says that the full extent of pollution from such dumps is unknown since most lack monitoring systems.

A soon-to-be-released study will show that fly ash dumps in Pennsylvania have also contaminated local groundwater supplies, the watchdog groups report. The possibility of such contamination has been a concern for residents of the Ben Titus Road community north of Hometown, where the Army for a Clean Environment has counted as many as eight cases of polycythemia vera, a rare bone marrow cancer. Ben Titus Road lies about a mile downhill from Northeastern Power Co., a cogeneration plant that burns anthracite coal waste or “culm” as its primary fuel and diesel or fuel oil as a secondary fuel. The resulting coal ash waste is then dumped into abandoned mine pits on adjacent land as part of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s "beneficial use" program.

Army for a Clean Environment Director Dr. Dante Picciano is calling on state leaders to protect the public's health from the dumps' hazards. "We are now asking our elected officials to enact laws for the safe and proper disposal of these industrial wastes," says Picciano. "It is time for our legislators to stand up and do what is right for the health and safety of the people of Pennsylvania."

There are currently 18 waste-fuel-burning power plants operating in the United States, with 14 of them in Pennsylvania and five in Schuylkill County – more than any other county in the nation. The ash from these waste-fuel-fired facilities is particularly rich in poisons, cautions the Philadelphia-based Energy Energy Justice Network:

Since far more mercury and other toxic contaminants enter a waste coal burner to produce a given amount of electricity, these high levels of toxic contaminants have to come out somewhere. Toxic metals cannot be destroyed by burning them. To the extent that they are captured in pollution controls (protecting the air), they are then concentrated in the highly toxic ash that ultimately threatens the groundwater wherever this ash is dumped. Waste coal burners have cleaner air emissions than antiquated coal plants due to their better pollution controls, but this only means that the ash is far more toxic, since the highly toxic particulates captured in pollution control equipment end up in the ash. The industry claims that 99.8% of the mercury in the fuel is captured and ends up in their ash.

Waste coal ash is dumped in communities not far from the waste coal burners, threatening the groundwater with leaching lead, mercury and other poisons. Power plant waste is allowed to be dumped without the basic protections (landfill liners) that are required for dumping household trash. When burning any solid fuel, the resulting ash has a higher surface area than the raw, unburned material. The dangers of toxic leaching from ash can be expected to be greater than from the unburned waste coal. Just like with coffee, running water over coffee grounds leaches far more coffee out than if you ran water over whole coffee beans.

Indeed, tests conducted in 2004 on the Still Creek Reservoir, which also lies along Ben Titus Road downhill from NEPCO, found that lead levels in untreated water were almost five times over federal drinking water standards. Local residents have raised concerns that the local groundwater supply and reservoir may be contaminated with pollution from NEPCO's smokestacks, its fly ash pit and/or McAdoo Associates, a former industrial waste incinerator-turned-Superfund site that's next to the cogeneration plant.

Also, an independent statistical analysis I conducted last year (and that has since been confirmed by the medical director of the Northeast Regional Cancer Institute) found a link between a Pennsylvania county's proximity to waste-fuel burning power plants and an unusually high incidence of polycythemia vera. That knowledge, coupled with these new revelations, makes me wonder: Are the air emissions from such plants to blame for their deleterious effect on public health? Or could the problem also be related to their combustion waste disposal practices?