The Environmental Integrity Project released a detailed report today on coal ash contamination in 21 states, including Iowa:

Days before the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) kicks off a series of regional hearings across the United States on whether and how to regulate toxic coal ash waste from coal-fired power plants, a major new study identifies 39 additional coal-ash dump sites in 21 states that are contaminating drinking water or surface water with arsenic and other heavy metals.  The report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Earthjustice and the Sierra Club documents the fact that state governments are not adequately monitoring the coal combustion waste (CCW) disposal sites and that the USEPA needs to enact strong new regulations to protect the public.   The  report shows that, at every one of the coal ash dump sites equipped with groundwater monitoring wells, concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic or lead exceed federal health-based standards for drinking water, with concentrations at Hatfield’s Ferry site in Pennsylvania reaching as high as 341 times the federal standard for arsenic.

You can read the full report here (pdf file). It covers three coal ash disposal sites in Iowa: George Neal Station North (pages 26-31), George Neal Station South (pages 32-26), and Lansing Station Ash Ponds and Landfill (pages 37-40). Neal North and South are both in northwest Iowa’s Woodbury County. Lansing is in Allamakee County, in the far northeast corner of the state. The report notes that “there are at least five public water wells within a five-mile radius” of all three Iowa sites. There are “25 or more private drinking water wells at or within two miles” of the Lansing site, which also threatens surface waters in the Mississippi River.

I posted a lengthy excerpt from the press release accompanying today’s report (pdf file) after the jump.

The Iowa Independent blog has reported extensively on proposed coal ash regulations, as well as health problems caused when toxic substances leach from coal ash into groundwater.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad has said he would whole-heartedly support new coal-fired power plants in Iowa, and many Iowa politicians in both parties expressed regret last year when plans for new coal-fired power plants in Waterloo and Marshalltown were shelved. They should read this report and explain why a few dozen permanent jobs are worth creating more coal ash that will poison Iowans’ drinking water for decades. Coal combustion in power plants is also “one of the nation’s largest sources of air pollutants that damage cardiovascular and respiratory health and threaten healthy child development.”

Excerpt from August 26, 2010 press release by the Environmental Integrity Project, NEW STUDY: COAL ASH WATER-CONTAMINATION MUCH WORSE THAN PREVIOUSLY ESTIMATED, WITH 39 ADDITIONAL TOXIC SITES IDENTIFIED IN 21 STATES:

The pollution in coal ash poses serious health risks. People living near unlined coal ash ponds can have an extremely high one in 50 risk of cancer. That’s more than 2,000 times higher than what USEPA considers acceptable. The toxins found in coal ash have also been linked to organ disease, respiratory illness, neurological damage, and developmental problems.

• Coal ash contamination of water is pervasive in the United States. The total number of sites polluted by coal ash (including scrubber) sludge now is at least 137 in 34 states. These contaminated sites represent a substantial percentage (29 percent) of the approximately 467 plants that dispose of coal ash onsite or offsite.

• Coal ash is putting drinking water from private wells is at risk. Contaminated groundwater underneath at least 15 of the 39 sites is moving toward private water wells within two miles of site boundaries, according to monitoring data and public information on private well locations at the following dumpsites: Independence (AR), Lansing (MI), Joliet 9 (IL), Cayuga (NY), Cardinal (OH), Muskingum (OH), Gavin (OH), Uniontown (OH), Northeastern (OK), Boardman (OR), Bruce Mansfield (PA), Hatfield’s Ferry (PA), Big Stone (SD), Oak Creek (WI) and Fayette Power (TX). Public information on private drinking water wells is often incomplete, limited or out of date, but for at least eight of these sites– Lansing, Joliet 9, Muskingum, Gavin, Uniontown, Bruce Mansfield, Oak Creek, and Fayette Power, there are 25 or more private drinking water wells at or within two miles of the site. At the Joliet 9 and Uniontown sites there are 90 or more private drinking water wells within a mile of the contaminated site.

• Coal ash threatens public water wells and intakes. At least 18 of the 39 contaminated sites are located within five miles of a public groundwater well that could potentially be affected by pollutants from these sites. At nine of those sites, there are at least five public water wells within a five-mile radius: Flint Creek (AR); Montville (CT); Lansing (IA); George Neal North (IA); George Neal South

(IA); Big Cajun (LA); Dan River (NC); Cardinal (OH); and Fayette Power Project (TX).

• Coal ash toxins are threatening surface waters. In several cases (e.g., Hatfield’s Ferry (PA), Gallatin, and Johnsonville in TN), coal ash dump sites are leaking their toxic cargo into rivers just upstream from the intakes for public water systems. Often, metals like arsenic are discharged to rivers through adjacent groundwater. For example, monitoring wells in an aquifer that flows from the Hatfield’s Ferry (PA) site to the Monongahela River, less than half a mile away, have consistently measured arsenic at levels substantially above the MCL for the last five years. Lax regulation of ash disposal sites that drain into large rivers such as TVA’s Shawnee (KY), Gallatin and Johnsonville (TN) sites along the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers respectively, the Big Cajun (LA) and Lansing (IA) sites along the Mississippi River or Leland Olds (ND) site along the Missouri River assumes that harmful concentrations of metals in groundwater or surface water discharges from ash sites will be diluted to safe levels in the river water but ignores the long-term build-up of metals from such discharges in river ecosystems.

• Most damaged sites are still active and virtually all show recent evidence of contamination. The damaged sites identified cannot be dismissed as a legacy of past practices that are no longer allowed today. Almost all of the facilities described in the report are active disposal sites. The contamination is documented by recent data (from 2007 or later) at 32 of the 35 sites for which groundwater monitoring results are available. Even the few closed sites show that contamination often continues and even worsens for generations after disposal ceases. For example, nearly 40 years after coal ash disposal stopped at the Montville site (CT), average concentrations of arsenic in groundwater collected in 2007-2009 still exceed the MCL by 21 times and are higher than measurements taken ten years ago.

• Illegal open dumping in violation of federal law may be occurring. As many as 27 of the 35 sites where groundwater is contaminated may be illegal open dumps according to federal law, based on the high levels of metals found in the groundwater. When such standards are exceeded, federal law requires that the operator close the dump, stop the flow of contamination, or obtain a waiver from the state that allows the facility to pollute the underlying aquifer. However, USEPA has no authority to enforce these standards. Even though states have the primary authority to enforce these standards, it appears that they have routinely ignored the federal open dumping guidelines for coal ash dumps and allowed illegal dumps to operate and contaminate potential drinking water sources.

• Many states require no groundwater monitoring at all. Large coal ash-generating states like Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, and Tennessee, to name a few, require no monitoring by law at ash ponds. Although data were available for the Lower Colorado River Authority’s ash pond, most coal ash dump sites in Texas are exempt from any regulation or monitoring by the state. States whose regulations fail to require monitoring at ash ponds, both old and new, accounted for approximately 70 percent of the coal combustion waste generated nationwide in 2008. A few of these states require monitoring only at new ponds, but since 75 percent of waste ponds are over 25 years old and 10 percent are over 50 years old, these state regulations leave a large and dangerous gap.

• States agencies have not required polluters to cleanup even as contamination increases. Power companies that own or operate sites that contaminate groundwater ought to be required to clean them up. At 21 sites examined in this study, the evidence of groundwater contamination was serious enough to cause the state agency to require additional monitoring and some assessment of its causes. Too often, state agencies routinely accept claims by utilities that contaminant increases are the result of sampling anomalies, or that “nature” is responsible for heavy metal concentrations that are in fact far above background levels. Without further investigation of the flimsy evidence, states let operators return to reduced monitoring or stop monitoring altogether. In the meantime, the utilities may quietly purchase surrounding property where wells are contaminated, often without alerting the state or the community that a danger exists. At no site did a state require the utility company to stop the contamination, let alone clean it up.