The War on Coal | FrontPage Magazine

The War on Coal | FrontPage Magazine: "The United States Environmental Protection Agency is soon expected to make a decision that could have an enormous impact on coal-fired power plants across the nation and, by extension, on the cost of energy and building materials. No, we’re not talking about greenhouse gas regulations here. The question that USEPA Administrator Lisa Jackson must answer is this: Should the ash generated from the burning of coal be classified as a hazardous waste or not? It’s a decision that has the potential to pile more costs onto the price of energy at a time we can least afford it.

The Agency began considering reclassification following a disastrous release of 1.7 million cubic yards of fly ash from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant, a large coal-fired power station located east of Knoxville, Tennessee, in December 2008. That release, caused by the failure of an earthen retention wall, caused many environmental groups to renew their call for the USEPA to classify coal ash as a hazardous waste.

Such an action would be another way to undermine coal-fired power, forcing coal-fired power plants not only to dispose of the ash they generate, but to pay a premium to do so. The cost to dispose of ash as a hazardous waste is typically four or five times higher than the costs to dispose of it under a lesser classification. Coal fired power plants generate about 130 million tons per year of ash. If we conservatively assume that the cost of ash handling would rise by approximately $200 per ton, reclassification would cost over $25 billion per year, and those costs would inevitably be passed along to consumers."