FROSTBURG -The state fined Constellation Energy $1 million for contaminating wells in Gambrills by dumping millions of tons of ash from its power plants in old gravel mines there.
But with the state's blessing, another energy company is dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of ash into active mine pits in Western Maryland. Eighteen-wheel trucks routinely deposit steaming loads of ash from the Warrior Run power plant at a hillside coal mine overlooking the hamlet of Carlos just south of here.
The difference, state officials say, is that they consider dumping ash into coal mines beneficial for Western Maryland's streams, which suffer from acidic pollution draining from mined lands. The ash from the Warrior Run plant helps prevent acid from leaching out of the rubble left behind after the coal is extracted, they say. It's also a money-saver for the power company - AES, based in Arlington, Va. - since it doesn't have to pay for costly disposal in a state-regulated landfill.
But environmental activists call the practice of filling coal mines with ash a worrisome experiment that has not proved to be environmentally safe - and they are asking for federal regulations to govern the disposal of ash, with its many harmful chemicals.
"It's waste disposal, not mine reclamation," contends Lisa Evans, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice. "I don't know that in every circumstance it will cause harm, but we have seen it cause harm in enough mines and landfills and surface impoundments that safeguards are absolutely required."
Coal ash is the waste produced by burning coal - light fly ash collected in the smokestack, plus heavier bottom ash left after the fire has consumed the fossil fuel. The nation's power plants produce enough ash from the coal they burn to fill 1 million railroad cars a year, according to a 2006 report by the National Research Council. Maryland's coal-burning power plants produce about 2 million tons of ash a year, state officials estimate.
Nationally, most of it is deposited in landfills and man-made ponds, where there have been a number of problems. Recently, an earthen dam in Tennessee ruptured, releasing millions of tons of coal-ash sludge that destroyed homes and fouled a river.
In Maryland, in addition to the Gambrills well contamination, an ash landfill in Charles County has polluted streams feeding the Zekiah Swamp. Those problems have led to calls for stricter federal regulation of coal ash disposal, and the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, has vowed to reconsider her agency's decision to leave oversight largely to the states.
