WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday set the first national standards for waste generated from coal burned for electricity, treating it more like household garbage rather than a hazardous material.
Environmentalists had pushed for the hazardous classification, citing the hundreds of cases nationwide in which coal ash waste had tainted waterways or underground aquifers. The coal industry wanted the less stringent classification, arguing that coal ash wasn't dangerous, and that a hazardous label would hinder recycling. About 40 percent of coal ash is reused.
The Environmental Protection Agency said in a call with reporters Friday that the record did not support a hazardous classification. The agency said the steps they were taking would protect communities from the risks associated with coal ash waste sites and hold the companies operating them accountable.
"It does what we hoped to accomplish … in a very aggressive but reasonable and pragmatic way," said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy.
The Obama administration was under court order to unveil the rule Friday, ending a six-year effort that began after a massive spill at a Tennessee power plant in 2008. Since then, the EPA has documented coal ash waste sites tainting hundreds of waterways and underground aquifers in numerous states with heavy metals and other toxic contaminants.
Coal ash had been piling up in ponds and landfill sites at power plants for years, an unintended consequence of the EPA's push to scrub air pollutants from smokestacks.
In volume, it ranks only behind household trash in quantity, and it is expected to grow as the EPA controls pollutants like heat-trapping carbon dioxide and mercury and other toxic air pollutants from the nation's coal fleet. On the upside, a switch from coal to natural gas-fired power plants in recent years has generated less ash.
The rules unveiled Friday will boost monitoring for leaks and control blowing dust, and require companies to make testing results public. They also set standards for closing waste sites, requiring those that are structurally deficient or tainting waterways to close.
But the regulations do not cover sites at shuttered power plants. And in some cases, they would allow existing landfills that do not meet the new standards to continue to operate.
Environmentalists vowed to work to make the rules stronger Friday.
"While EPA and the Obama Administration have taken a modest first step by introducing some protections on the disposal of coal ash, they do not go far enough to protect families from this toxic pollution," said Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's coal campaign.
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