New fly ash tests, familiar concerns

With each additional test, it seems clear that health risks lurk beneath a Chesapeake golf course. That's all the more reason for city officials, a major utility and environmental experts to ensure the availability of safe drinking water to nearby residents.

The results also call into question whether fly ash is truly safe in some so-called "beneficial uses."

The results should force the Environmental Protection Agency to re-evaluate whether it must establish stricter national standards for the substance, a byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity. Currently, each state makes its own regulations.

Virginian-Pilot writer Robert McCabe recently reported on the latest test by a contractor hired by the EPA. The Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville was sculpted atop 1.5 million tons of fly ash from Dominion Virginia Power's plant in the Deep Creek section of Chesapeake.

The utility has said it used a binding agent that was supposed to prevent leaching. But unlike in a landfill, there were no requirements to install liners or monitor the groundwater.

Tetra Tech EM Inc., based in Pennsylvania, has found elevated levels of arsenic and lead in groundwater samples from the course, and elevated lead in four of 70 samples taken from nearby residential wells. Elevated levels of manganese were found in well samples. Roughly 200 potable wells sit within a nearby radius of the course.

Lead can cause severe mental and neurological effects, especially in children; arsenic and other dangerous contaminants have turned up in other tests.

Officials should place permanent groundwater-monitoring wells near the course and schedule additional sampling, Tetra Tech recommended. The EPA will release its own opinion next month, an agency official said.

City officials conducted tests earlier that found several chemicals in alarming concentrations.

Already, Dominion has pledged to spend as much as $6 million to run water lines to homes near the course. It should be willing - and eager - to pay even more should the situation warrant it. Meanwhile, the state Department of Environmental Quality is re-examining the use in Virginia of coal combustion products, including fly ash.

Federal authorities have a major role to play, too. The EPA has been reluctant to impose national standards on fly ash and other coal combustion products. Given the problems in Chesapeake, and the burst of a retention pond at a plant operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority in December, that oversight is needed. The sooner, the better.