Waukegan residents got an early Christmas present — the possibility of getting rid of coal leftovers in their yule stockings. In a terse message, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week companies have to eliminate coal ash pits from decommissioned properties.
The High Court’s one-sentence decision allows the federal Environmental Protection Agency to enforce its law requiring coal-fired generating plants to dispose of what is considered toxic: Coal ash pits, which contain the byproducts of making electricity. Various power companies across the nation have fought the EPA rule and perhaps will continue to do so in the courts or seek relief from the incoming Trump administration.
One of them was the Eastern Kentucky Power Cooperative, which asked federal courts to stay enforcement of the EPA rule while its lawsuit against the anti-pollution agency weaves through the judicial process. The Supreme Court’s one-sentence decision gives the EPA the enforcement tool while court action continues, according to Steve Sadin’s page-one News-Sun story of Dec. 18.
The pre-Christmas ruling affects the two coal-ash pits located yards from Lake Michigan along Waukegan’s shoreline on the site of the sprawling former ComEd Generating Station now owned by Houston-based NRG Energy, which has been turned into a “peaker plant” used only to produce electricity when demand is high to avoid power shortages. Cleaning up the two nasty-looking pits has been in limbo since 2015 when the EPA issued its first directive governing coal ash.
It left a loophole — leaving unregulated those unlined ponds and landfills that stopped receiving coal fly and bottom ash before 2015 — large enough for companies to exploit. The agency’s new rule sought to make up for the previous oversight.
This is not just a Waukegan problem. The “ponds” are yards away from the main source of drinking water for much of Lake County, indeed the Chicago region.
Ponds are usually associated with idyllic swimming holes — with a few panfish, amphibians and algae — but the two NRG ash “ponds” are filled with hazardous materials. There are an estimated 1,000 operating ash ponds in the U.S., with the EPA saying coal ash is one of the country’s largest types of generated industrial waste.
Waukegan certainly has had enough of its share of industrial waste and remaining pollutants from its legacy industries along the lakeshore. It doesn’t need more, or the possibility down the stretch of another EPA Superfund in the city.
Some may remember the December 2008 catastrophic failure of ash ponds at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in the eastern part of the state. In that instance, a dike ruptured releasing 1.1 billion gallons of contaminated sludge composed of fly ash slurry which flowed into nearby waterways.
At the time, it was the largest industrial spill in the nation, and an environmental and economic nightmare in Tennessee. It cost the TVA some $1 billion to clean up after pollution fouled rivers in the area and destroyed dozens of homes.
That is why Waukegan and state officials are leery of NRG’s plans. Especially since the Illinois Pollution Control Board found in 2019 that NRG was responsible for groundwater contamination.
The plans offered by the company include removing the west coal ash pond tailings from the site and just cap the one to the east, the one closest to Lake Michigan. NRG’s proposal is to keep the coal ash static and buried beneath the cover of artificial turf.
At that point, the land would become “passive open space.” Environmental groups, city and state officials have long prodded NRG for total remediation of both ponds which would entail draining them, removing all the environmentally hazardous materials from them, trucking the ash out and covering the pits.
The EPA says coal ash contains deadly contaminants like mercury, cadmium and arsenic. The contaminants can pollute waterways and groundwater if proper protocols are not followed, the agency notes.
Ironically, just to the north in Zion, radioactive nuclear waste was trucked and removed via trains when the retired ComEd nuclear plant, also along the Lake Michigan shoreline, closed in 1998. Seems they could do the same with the existing Canadian National spur line which leads to the power plant and was used by freight trains bringing mega-tons of coal into the generating station over the decades.
Maybe by this time next holiday season, there will be a solid plan in place to deal with the environmental issue at the NRG site. That should include the total drainage and removal of all pollutants in order to protect future city residents and Lake Michigan.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
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