DEQ officials gather to discuss how to regulate fly-ash use

GLEN ALLEN

The state Department of Environmental Quality took another step Wednesday toward the possible toughening of regulations governing coal-ash projects like Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville.

In a meeting that lasted more than four hours, DEQ officials brainstormed with a panel of about a dozen experts on potential changes to existing regulations. Ideas included a state public notice requirement as well as more rigorous enforcement of rules maintaining a distance between fly ash and water.

"There were a lot of good recommendations," said Debra Miller, director of the Office of Solid Waste at the DEQ. Miller helped lead the session.

Miller and others at the DEQ will consolidate the recommendations, which could eventually go before the department's Office of Regulatory Affairs and begin a review process that could take as long as two years before becoming finalized.

Overshadowing the meeting was the reality that the fly-ash regulations on the table for discussion, in place since 1995, affected only 14 projects in the state, including the Chesapeake golf course.

"This is just a very small portion of what's available to use," said Milt Johnston of DEQ's Tidewater office.

Another set of provisions has allowed as many as 100 to 150 projects in the Tidewater region alone, Johnston said. Those projects, in which fly ash is covered by pavement or structures, do not require notification of the DEQ and are not tracked by the department.

Among the examples Johnston cited were the DEQ's own offices in Virginia Beach and embankments along a section of the Chesapeake Expressway.

The session Wednesday, like one in June, involved representatives from Dominion Virginia Power, fly-ash recycling executives, professors from Virginia Tech and environmental advocates.

Both meetings were driven in part by news coverage of two fly-ash projects in different parts of the state - the golf course in Chesapeake and a riverside development in Giles County - both structural fill projects involving fly ash from coal-burning power plants.

Discussion about the Chesapeake site was discouraged Wednesday by representatives of the power industry and the DEQ, who argued that there wasn't enough firm data to talk about the issues there with any authority.

"Since the department hasn't seen that data, we don't know about the well construction, the quality of it; I don't want to utilize that as the case in point," Miller told the panel.

After the meeting, Miller said all she had seen was information posted on the city of Chesapeake's Web site,

which left questions unanswered. Among them, she said, was uncertainty about how much fly ash, if any, was on the site of the groundwater-monitoring wells and questions about the depth of the well samplings.

Fly ash is a powdery residue left from the burning of coal for electricity. It contains heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury that can pose environmental threats to air and water.

While it can be recycled for use in concrete products and wallboard manufacturing, it is also used as an alternative to fill dirt, which was the focus of the DEQ discussion.

At Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville, 1.5 million tons of fly ash from Dominion Virginia Power's Deep Creek power plant was used as "structural fill" to contour the 18-hole course, which includes a series of unlined, man-made "lakes."

Among the ideas broached Wednesday: toughening the requirements regarding the minimum distance between fly ash and the "maximum seasonal water table," the highest point at which groundwater on a site rises; revisiting the flood plain restrictions on fly-ash projects; and establishing a state requirement for public notification before projects can move forward.

A memo from W. Lee Daniels, a Virginia Tech professor and fly-ash expert, said the key issue with leaching risks revolved around fly ash's exposure to water.

"We should focus on limiting water migration into and through the ash," he wrote.

Darlene Cunningham, from Pearisburg, in the western part of the state, drove with two other members from Concerned Citizens of Giles County to sit in on the Wednesday session.

They were concerned that a public notification requirement - which is now left up to individual localities - becomes part of the state's regulations.

"I was really glad to hear some of the panelists who were concerned about the environment," she said.

David Goss, executive director of the Colorado-based American Coal Ash Association, who was among the panelists, said he thought the meeting was useful.

"The process is a good dialogue," he said. "Again, it goes back to that there's no simple answer," alluding to the unique array of soil and water issues each proposed fly-ash site presents.

Robert McCabe, (757) 222-5217, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com