Legal settlement ensures toxic coal ash will be removed from flood plain of Illinois’ only national scenic river
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More than a half century’s worth of toxic coal ash will be excavated from the flood plain of Illinois’ only national scenic river as part of a deal announced Thursday that could establish a precedent for other hazardous waste dumps throughout the state.
Under a legal settlement brokered by environmental lawyers and Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office, Texas-based Vistra will drain pits of water-soaked coal ash along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River, about 120 miles south of Chicago. The company also will dig a trench to collect contaminated groundwater and monitor the fast-eroding riverbank after major storms.
Within the next three years, Vistra is required to apply for a permit to build a landfill nearby to safely dispose of enough coal ash from the former Vermilion Power Station to fill the Empire State Building nearly two and a half times.
Vistra previously had sought permission to cap the coal ash and leave it behind a wall of rocks nearly six football fields long. The company backed down after a Chicago Tribune reporter and photographer paddled the Middle Fork in 2018 with a trio of river advocates who documented how previous efforts to wall off the waste had failed.
Nudged by the media attention and lawsuits filed by nonprofit groups, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency took a closer look at the Vermilion County site, located a few miles downstream from a popular kayak and canoe launch where the Middle Fork winds through moraines that interrupt the region’s flat farmland.
Concerns about the Middle Fork also helped persuade state leaders to adopt new regulations requiring Vistra and other energy companies to clean up coal ash dumps near two dozen other power plants, most of which will be closed by the end of the decade.
“This is a great victory,” Andrew Rehn, senior water resources engineer at the Champaign-based Prairie Rivers Network, said about the legal settlement approved Thursday by a Vermilion County judge. “Now we have firm deadlines for restoring this stretch of the Middle Fork to a wild, natural, scenic river.”
Vistra will pay the state $80,000 and Vermilion County $20,000 in fines to resolve Raoul’s complaint. Another $400,000 from the company will be split evenly between the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the county to plant trees and other riparian species along the riverbank and in nearby Kennekuk County Park.
The company, which said it could take more than a decade to safely remove the waste, took on liabilities for the now-defunct coal plant when it absorbed another Texas-based energy company, Dynegy, in a corporate merger. Dynegy closed the Vermilion plant in 2011, nearly six decades after Illinois Power built it.
“Our company is demonstrating our commitment to closing its coal ash ponds through responsible and environmentally sound methods based on the unique factors at each coal plant site,” Vistra said in a statement.
Nearly all of the coal ash dumps in Illinois are leaching pollution into lakes, rivers and groundwater near low-income communities, according to state records. The waste is concentrated with arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese and other heavy metals.
Drinking water supplies are threatened near 10 of the 24 sites, including two in Will County. Another in north suburban Waukegan is contaminating groundwater that flows toward Lake Michigan.
New regulations proposed by the Biden administration would expand the number of coal ash dumps subject to federal oversight, a change intended to prevent spills that wreaked havoc near power plants in North Carolina and Tennessee.
