Growing Optimism that EPA will Regulate Coal Ash as Non-Hazardous Waste

Date: January 10, 2011

Source: News Room

As EPA reviews comments on its first-time plan to regulate coal ash as a waste, industry groups are growing optimistic that the agency will ultimately favor a less stringent non-hazardous approach. Evidence includes an unprecedented fight between EPA and the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB), near-unanimous opposition to a subtitle C approach, including by many members of Congress, all 50 states, other federal agencies and many industry groups. As a sign that the agency is preparing for less direct control, EPA officials are also working on new Clean Water Act (CWA) rules regulating discharges from coal ash impoundments and other utility sources, case-by-case oversight to ensure reporting under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and possible rules governing products containing coal ash. Environmentalists who favor the strict subtitle C rules welcome additional measures such as CWA effluent limitations but worry that these are insufficient because they will not address transport, handling and storage requirements that can only be regulated under subtitle C.

The rule aims to prevent another disaster of spilled coal ash, such as the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) spill in Kingston, TN, that prompted the regulation. But EPA's public proposal took a neutral stance on how to regulate the waste after White House reviewers, hearing industry concerns that a hazardous rule would stigmatize beneficial reuse of ash, scaled back the agency's draft measure that favored regulating the ash as hazardous.

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