The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still does not know the exact number of coal ash dumps at the nation's power plants, but it's moving ahead with plans to regulate them.

Those are among the findings of a report [PDF] released last week by the Government Accountability Office on the status of EPA's efforts to improve oversight of coal combustion waste. The GAO is an independent, nonpartisan watchdog agency that serves Congress.

The report was prepared in response to a request from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Their request came following the December 2008 coal ash spill disaster from a surface impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee.

That spill covered more than 300 acres with toxic waste, destroyed three homes and damaged 23 others, damaged nearby roads and rail lines, and sent toxic pollution into the nearby Emory River. TVA has estimated it could cost as much as $1.2 billion to clean up the mess and take up to three years.

As of mid-September, the EPA had identified over 580 coal ash waste surface impoundments nationwide, GAO reports. A surface impoundment is a depression, excavation, or diked area where the liquid coal waste is stored. Sometimes the solids in the waste are left to accumulate in the impoundment, while in other cases they are dredged periodically and taken to another disposal unit, such as a landfill.

Coal ash is also disposed of through minefilling, where it's dumped into abandoned mines. And a significant amount of the coal combustion waste produced at power plants goes to manufacture products such as cement and wallboard or structural fill for roads and other development, an application known under the law as "beneficial use."

Of the 131 million tons of coal combustion waste generated by U.S. utilities in 2007, 38 percent went toward so-called beneficial uses, 36 percent into landfills, 21 percent into surface impoundments, and 5 percent into mines, according to the GAO. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, power companies reported dumping into surface impoundments and landfills coal ash waste containing more than 124 million pounds of six toxic pollutants: arsenic, chromium, lead, nickel, selenium, and thallium.

Among the risks associated with surface impoundments are collapses such as the one at the Kingston plant; the leaching of coal ash contaminants such as arsenic, chromium, and lead into surface or groundwater supplies; and the discharge of wastewater containing coal ash contamination into rivers and other surface water supplies.

Following the Kingston disaster, the EPA sent out information requests to 162 electric generation facilities and 61 corporate offices in an efforts to gather information on coal waste surface impoundments. It's created a database with information on 584 surface impoundments or similar facilities in 35 states -- but the EPA says this number is likely to change as it conducts site visits.

Over the past 10 years, 26 facilities have reported spills or other unpermitted releases from a total of 35 surface impoundments. EPA has also identified 49 impoundments that have a high hazard potential rating, meaning that a failure would probably kill people.

The EPA is further assessing these potentially dangerous units. It's also considering whether to regulate the structural integrity of coal ash waste surface impoundments through wastewater discharge permits -- a move that came one day after three environmental groups announced they planned to sue the agency for failing to properly regulate such discharges.

The EPA recently completed a study of toxins in wastewater discharges from coal ash impoundments [PDF]. It concluded that current guidelines should be revised because of the significant toxic releases from impoundments and the likelihood that these will increase significantly over the next few years as new air pollution controls are installed.

The GAO report looked at federal oversight issues that still need to be resolved as EPA develops proposed regulations for coal ash waste disposal. It noted that while the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 is the key federal law regulating hazardous waste, a 1980 amendment to the law sponsored by now-deceased Congressman Tom Bevill (D-Ala.) exempted coal combustion waste from RCRA.

EPA is considering several options for regulating the material:

* Regulating the waste as hazardous under RCRA Subtitle C. While supported by environmental groups, this approach is opposed by the industry because of the potential cost and complexity.

* Regulating the waste as non-hazardous solid waste under RCRA Subtitle D. This approach is supported by industry but opposed by environmental groups because EPA could not routinely inspect disposal sites or require permits and because the opportunity for public involvement in permits would be limited.

* A hybrid approach in which the material would be regulated as ordinary solid waste under certain conditions or a hazardous waste under others, such as designating wet disposal in surface impoundments as hazardous and dry waste in landfills as non-hazardous.

Lisa Evans, a coal ash expert with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, told the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette's Coal Tattoo Blog that she had concerns about the hybrid regulatory approach, noting that dry disposal of coal ash waste also presents significant risks to health and the environment:

... [I]t would be a big mistake for EPA to leave landfilling entirely to the states. Current state laws are inadequate, and they will likely remain inadequate without EPA's hazardous designation.

EPA plans to issue its proposed rule on coal ash disposal next month.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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It's no secret that the Bush administration has slashed fines for polluters: The U.S. EPA issued $137.7 million in penalties in 2007, down from $240.6 million in 1998. But even that level of enforcement is overstated, says a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The EPA publicly reports the penalties it slaps on egregious earth-effers, but doesn't report which fines actually get paid up -- which really calls the effectiveness of the whole process into question, says the GAO. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.), who requested the investigation, would like to take a moment to state the obvious: "The bottom line is that environmental enforcement has significantly declined since the Bush administration took office."

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The Environmental "Protection" Agency faced two major slams yesterday, from east and west. In Washington, D.C., the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office issued a report scolding EPA for its post-9/11 cleanup efforts, saying the agency's approach to toxic indoor contamination in buildings near the site is misdirected and ignores New Yorkers' health concerns. The report "confirms our worst fears about the Bush administration's incompetence," said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who almost sounds as if she's running for office or something. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Friends of the Earth and Earthjustice filed suit against EPA over its failure to set emissions standards for oceangoing ships around the nation. The agency had pledged in 2003 to issue such a rule by this April, but whoops! "What's at stake here," said Teri Shore of Friends of the Earth, "is the lives of thousands of people around the country who will continue to inhale diesel exhaust from large ships."

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When the Bush administration wants to gin up some environmental cred, it cites efforts underway to slash diesel emissions by requiring trucking companies to switch to cleaner engines. But the untold story is that it may be the taxpayers -- not the polluters -- who end up footing much of the bill.

Big Mac attack.

Photo: U.S. House.

The trucking industry has long been a leading opponent of federal clean-air regulations, and since 1993 it has had a relentless advocate in Rep. Mac Collins (R-Ga.), former owner of Collins Trucking Co. -- a business that is now run by the representative's family and that continues to pay him $21,600 a year as an adviser. U.S. EPA regulations will require truck fleets to switch to cleaner-burning diesel engines by 2007, and Collins, who's running for the Senate this year, wants tax breaks to help companies like his defray the cost.

Claiming that the diesel regulations would financially hamstring the industry, 19 GOP members of the House, including Collins, recently asked the General Accounting Office -- the watchdog arm of Congress responsible for scrutinizing the activities of federal agencies -- to examine the diesel regulations.

The regs were proposed by the EPA in 2000 and put in place by the Clinton administration just before it left office in 2001. Just days later, the new Bush administration froze the regulations to give it time to determine whether their health benefits justified their costs to the American economy.

Satisfied that they did -- with overwhelming scientific data to prove it -- the Bush EPA then reinstated the Clinton rules with much tough-guy fanfare.

It's hard to argue with the numbers: Cleaner diesel engines will prevent an estimated 8,300 deaths from respiratory disease per year, according to EPA research, and result in 17,600 fewer cases of acute bronchitis and 360,000 fewer asthma attacks in kids.

Today, the administration's move to "aggressively tackle" diesel emissions is advertised as one of President Bush's top environmental accomplishments on his 2004 campaign website.

The trucking industry didn't take well to the news that the diesel regs were going forward, but it may still get off the hook. Officials in the Bush EPA and in the GAO seem inclined to help the industry keep on truckin' happily along -- free of financial responsibility for the deadly pollution it creates.

Truck everlasting?

The GAO report [PDF] on the diesel regulations, released on March 11, "openly endorses recommendations truckers have been making for years and explicitly parrots the industry's arguments behind these recommendations," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of Clean Air Trust. The report not only recommends that the agency consider "economic incentives" to help industry comply, but suggests that the EPA failed to give due consideration to industry concerns in drafting the regulations.

Even the Bush administration found this allegation absurd. Assistant EPA administrator for air and radiation, Jeffrey Holmstead, wrote an indignant letter to the GAO that challenged the report's integrity and accuracy and implied that it was biased in favor of the trucking industry: "[T]he report simply appears to accept the views of one set of stakeholders ... it leaves the reader with the impression that challenges are overly daunting and that industry is unable to address them. This is simply wrong," he wrote.

Holmstead took particular umbrage at the report's implication that the EPA did not adequately consider industry concerns: "Especially troubling are the suggestions in the report that the agency failed to engage the trucking industry in the 2007 rulemaking process. ... I personally take the agency's responsibility to engage stakeholders very seriously."

The lead author of the GAO report, John Stephenson, was not available for comment.

Soon after the report was released, Holmstead accompanied EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt to a trucking industry meeting titled "Diesel Engine Emissions Summit II" in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to address the report's findings and assure the industry that the EPA is on its team.

"I am prepared to say, 'Let's work together,'" Leavitt announced to a round of applause from the audience of more than 900 industry representatives. He stressed that he is amenable to the idea of tax breaks to help trucking companies comply with the rules, saying it's the government's job to incentivize businesses "to do the right thing," and that the EPA is "dependent on all of you to figure out how to do that."

The EPA, though, does not typically ask taxpayers to shoulder the costs industry incurs when meeting new pollution standards. The health benefits of the diesel regs are supposed to justify their costs, and if the financial burden is heavy for industry, the costs get passed along to consumers anyway.

According to John Millett, an EPA spokesperson, the diesel emissions-reduction technology that will be required on new trucks by 2007 is expected to raise the cost of a truck by $1,200 to $1,900 -- an increase of less than 1 percent on the truck's total cost of between $150,000 to $200,000.

But the American Trucking Associations claims the costs will be markedly higher -- between $5,000 and $10,000 per truck, according to the organization's environmental counsel, Glen Kedzie. "Already the trucking industry has taken to buying up trucks in the pre-2007 fleet so they don't have to face the additional costs that they expect will be posed by the post-2007 fleet," he said.

Environmentalists say the trucking industry's fears are grossly exaggerated. But the larger point, they say, is that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to underwrite the costs, no matter what they are. A precedent like that would spark similar demands from every other regulated industry, eventually rendering pollution controls impracticable.

Still, Leavitt and Holmstead seem to see merit in abandoning the "polluter pays" principle. So concerned are they with the trucking industry's financial health that they've invited Collins to help write legislation that will line his own pockets: At the industry meeting last month, Holmstead vowed to work with the Georgia representative to develop financial incentives to soften any blow to the trucking industry from the diesel regulations.

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In a victory for the Bush administration and a significant setback for congressional oversight of White House goings-on, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the investigative arm of Congress does not have legal standing to sue Vice President Dick Cheney for refusing to turn over documents related to the development of the national energy policy. The ruling goes beyond the Cheney matter to state that the General Accounting Office, which investigates hundreds of government-affairs issues every year, has no right to bring almost any lawsuit -- an interpretation that could make it very difficult for the GAO to enforce requests for information from any federal agency. The White House hailed the decision as a turning point in what it called a generation of ever-increasing congressional encroachment into executive-branch territory, but critics said the ruling could dramatically weaken the GAO and render the president all but immune from oversight unless the opposition party controls Congress. The ruling is also a blow to environmentalists, and represents the second time in a week that courts have refused to grant access to the records of Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group. Enviros and others believe that the vice president met almost exclusively with commercial interests in developing the nation's energy policy. The GAO has not yet decided whether it will appeal the ruling.

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