The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet has negotiated a deal to clean up the pollution at a coal-fired power plant in western Kentucky. The agreement comes nearly two years after a state inspector first discovered coal ash leaching from a landfill at the D.B. Wilson plant near Centertown in Ohio County. That coal ash spill leaked arsenic into public waterways.
Conservationists say the deal is a rubber stamp on the power plant’s own plans and doesn’t do enough to address environmental impacts.
A field geologist with the Department of Waste Management first found the pollution during a routine inspection in October 2016. He walked north along the perimeter of a landfill at the D.B. Wilson plant, located about 40 minutes south of Owensboro. There he discovered a stream of dark black water flowing into a ditch, which leads to a pond,that flows into the Green River.
Earth Justice attorney Thom Cmar said the samples the geologist collected exceeded federal standards for arsenic by nearly a thousand times.
“Those arsenic numbers are just off the charts," said Cmar. "There’s really no room for debate. There’s no wiggle room when it comes to the levels of contamination that are being found at the Wilson site.”
The Energy and Environment Cabinet negotiated a deal with Big Rivers Electric Corp., the utility that owns the D.B. Wilson plant, to clean up the pollution at the site in May. Big Rivers declined an interview for this story.
The utility won’t pay a fine and has until 2020 to install a system to manage the leaks under the agreement. In the meantime, they have to repair the landfill and clean up all the pollution found on the surface as soon as “reasonably feasible.”
But Cmar said the state rubber-stamped the utility’s own plans and neglected to look for all of the environmental impacts.
“Perhaps most importantly in this one system, it’s called a 'leachate collection system,' it’s only operating at one portion of the site. So if there are other portions of the site that have not yet been identified where there is significant contamination that is entering the groundwater and potentially making its way back to the surface, nothing in this agreed order would address that and no one is requiring the company to even look for that.”
The power plant actually has a second landfill, right beside the first.
In a 2017 letter to Big Rivers, a Division of Waste Management official noted that both landfills have leaks that flow nearly a mile through unlined ditches.
A Big Rivers report from December found further evidence of leaks at the second landfill.
Director of Waste Management Jon Maybriar said, “I don’t know what to tell you, this is the first time I’ve seen this information. Based on our observations with what we’ve seen on follow-up site visits, the facility has been taking care of the leachate outbreaks.”
The Energy and Environment Cabinet said it’s inspected the site at least three times since it first found the pollution.
While other states are penalizing power companies for coal ash pollution, Kentucky has often worked with utilities to resolve violations.
Attorney for the cabinet Daniel Cleveland said that’s in part because of the way the coal ash rules were written prior to 2015. He said enforcement should be easier now.
“My understanding generally is the way that theses landfills were regulated was more of a negotiated process to meet a standard that was not quite as defined.”
Cmar, with Earth Justice, says all of these reasons are why there needs to be strong federal standards for coal ash, to protect public health and the environment.
“The state of Kentucky, other states around the country had decades where they were the only entities responsible for protecting the public from contamination at these sites and there is a long track record of failure, both in Kentucky and across the country.”
In June, Big Rivers received another violation at D.B. Wilson, this time for high levels of copper flowing into public waterways.
The Energy and Environment Cabinet said Big Rivers has since installed new technology that limits corrosion and is now in compliance with state permits.