An invigorated EPA must regulate fly ash

Tennessee residents are learning what some in Chesapeake have confronted the past year: Be very concerned about coal ash and how power plants store and discard it.

A retention pond burst recently at a plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, spreading more than a billion pounds of sludge. The gunk flooded a neighborhood and spilled into a nearby river.

The environmental effects of the spill aren't yet clear. But the Obama administration has signaled that it's more willing than its predecessor to closely monitor the stuff left over from burning coal.

Lisa Jackson, President Obama's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, told U.S. senators last week that her agency might regulate the waste from coal plants.

"The EPA currently has, and has in the past, assessed its regulatory options, and I think it is time to re-ask those questions," Jackson told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Right now, regulations are left up to the individual states. National regulations would be preferable to the varying state standards now in effect.

Virginia, for example, has stricter standards for ash kept at landfills but eases those conditions for so-called "beneficial uses." Shouldn't that be reversed? Regulators should also consider whether some applications are just too big a health and safety risk.

Roughly 1.5 million tons of fly ash were used to contour the Battlefield Golf Course at Centerville in Chesapeake.

The stuff is suspected of contaminating groundwater and has led to heightened scrutiny by nearby home-owners and city officials. Tests have since found high levels of arsenic, lead and other toxics in the groundwater.

About 200 potable wells lie within 2,000 feet of the outer boundaries of the course, city officials have said. Dominion Virginia Power, which supplied the fly ash, has agreed to pay up to $6 million to extend city water lines to replace wells in nearby homes.

Nationwide, the spill in Tennessee last month was followed by another spill of gypsum slurry at a plant in Alabama in early January. Those incidents, and the concerns in Chesapeake, argue for serious reconsideration of coal ash regulations, at the state level and in Washington.