Kentucky power plants called out for coal ash groundwater contamination in national report
Fifteen Kentucky power plants, two of which are in Jefferson County, were called out for their management of coal ash in a national report released Thursday.
Further up the Ohio River, the Ghent Generating Station and Trimble County Generating Station — both operated by Louisville's utility, LG&E and KU Energy — ranked as the 12th and 13th worst groundwater contaminators, respectively, in the national study of nearly 300 power plants by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice.
In Jefferson County, LG&E and KU's Cane Run and Mill Creek plants were named in the report for contamination risk. Across the river in New Albany, Duke Energy's retired Gallagher Station was also named.
Thursday's report is a follow-up on a similar study released in 2019. That past report found lithium in groundwater around the Ghent facility at 154 times the health threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Three years later, lithium and several other toxic contaminants are still present at nearly the same levels at Ghent and other locations.
"We disagreed with its findings when it was released three years ago ― and still do today," LG&E and KU Energy said of the new report and its predecessor. The utility company said the report relied on faulty, preliminary data, did not properly take into account LG&E and KU's efforts to comply with federal regulation, and "discounted naturally occurring levels" of some contaminants at the Ghent site.
More:Biden administration takes action on toxic coal ash plaguing Kentucky and Indiana
Several other plants showed staggeringly high contamination levels compared to EPA limits. At a plant near Sebree, mercury levels were 135 times higher than the EPA's threshold. In some cases, contamination levels have increased over the three years since the last study.
The EPA's Coal Ash Rule was established in 2015 in response to a disaster in Kingston, Tennessee, where more than one billion gallons of toxic coal ash were let loose in a dike failure at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-fired power plant, marking the worst industrial spill in U.S. history.
Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal for electricity generation, contains a laundry list of toxic chemicals and known carcinogens, including arsenic, lead, mercury and many more. And in the U.S., there's a lot of it.
"It is estimated that after 100 years of burning coal, U.S. power plants have generated approximately 5 billion tons of coal ash – enough toxic waste to reach the moon in train cars," the report said.
Report for America:Help support The Courier Journal's environmental coverage
Today, regulations exist for power plants to safely store coal ash, to prevent it from contaminating local drinking water sources and poisoning aquatic ecosystems. Utilities must also monitor groundwater for contamination, and take corrective action when contamination does happen.
But the federal regulations have loopholes, the report says. Plants are generally expected to self-implement the rule, and coal ash dumps that had stopped receiving waste before the 2015 rule was implemented are left out of the regulations, leaving many potential contamination sites without cleanup plans.
Thursday's report highlights several findings that the authors say indicate violation of federal coal ash regulation at the Ghent facility, including closing a coal ash pond already in contact with groundwater, lack of transparency on releases and cleanup, and failure to commit to a specific cleanup plan in a timely manner, as required by the Coal Ash Rule.
"We’re in full compliance with the current rule. We are in the process of performing all obligations under the rule," LG&E and KU said in an email, in disagreement with the report's assertions.
This crisis is not unique to LG&E and KU, or to Kentucky. The report found more than 90% of the included plants are contaminating local groundwater, and "a majority of coal plants are delaying and avoiding compliance with the requirements of the federal rule."
"In every state where coal is burned, power companies are violating federal health protections,” said Lisa Evans, senior attorney at Earthjustice, in Thursday's release. “Coal plant owners are ignoring the law and avoiding cleanup because they don’t want to pay for it."
Connor Giffin is an environmental reporter for The Courier Journal and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. He can be reached at cgiffin@gannett.com or on Twitter @giffin_connor.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky coal ash contamination remains high, report shows
