The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to deny requests by three power facilities for extended deadlines to close unlined coal ash impoundments that are risks to groundwater, while offering only a provisional extension to another. The decision came aspart of a larger agency push to strengthen regulation of煤炭燃烧残差disposal andfacilities with unlined storage.

EPA estimates that there are 500 unlined ash storage pits across the country.

In its Jan. 11 announcement, EPA said the three extension requests to plants in Indiana, Ohio and Iowa were denied because of “several potential deficiencies with groundwater monitoring, cleanup and closure activities,” including lack of monitoring wells or unsuitable monitoring methods and inadequate evaluations of planned technology that could affect proper cleanup.

The Obama administration in 2015 published more stringent requirements for coal ash disposal in landfills and surface impoundments, including lining certain types of ash ponds to prevent groundwater pollution, but in 2016 it allowed facilities with inactive impoundments to request extensions to comply.

In 2020, EPA under the Trump administration issued amendments that extended the extension.

“This is the most significant action EPA has taken to control coal ash pollution since its enactment of the 2015 rules,” says Frank Holleman, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has been involved in coal ash cleanup litigation for more than a decade.

That action includes a reassertion, applying nationwide, that companies cannot store coal ash in unlined pits, which includes those lined with clay, because of the potential to mix with groundwater, a practice that some state agencies have allowed utilities to engage in, says Holleman. “That door has now been shut and will require utilities and state agencies to redo their plans for closure.”

EPA has said it will work to ensure state-level plans match, at minimum, the federal requirements.

In addition, the agency says it will require companies to address any groundwater pollution beyond simply allowing pollutants to dilute over time. EPA will also more stringently oversee groundwater monitoring.

一些公用事业和国家机构已经在从无衬砌的矿井中去除煤灰的道路上已经很好，包括公用事业Duke Energy, headquartered in North Carolina, Virginia-based Dominion, and all utilities with basins in South Carolina.

霍尔曼说：“因此，这确实是一个行业标准。”

But many unlined pits remain to be addressed across the country. Holleman cites the ash pond at Georgia Power’s decommissioned Hammond power plant site, among other unlined pits the company had planned to leave as such, as well as Tennessee Valley Authority sites across Tennessee.

And while EPA determined extension requests for two Ameren-owned Missouri plants, Meramec Energy Center and Sioux Energy Center, were incomplete, the state Dept. of Natural Resources recently granted a permit to another of its sites, Labadie Energy Center, to release pollutants from two closed pits; EPA plans to create regulations for legacy impoundments.

被拒绝的植物是印第安纳州麦迪逊市的Clifty Creek发电站。俄亥俄州柴郡的加文发电厂；和爱荷华州奥图姆瓦的Ottumwa生成站。肯塔基州梅斯维尔的H.L. Spurlock Power Station的临时扩展。取决于通过地下水监测的EPA解决问题。

These are the first of 52 completed requests for extension the agency is reviewing. Decisions for the remaining requests will occur over the next few months, EPA said.

植物所有者Alliant Energy的女发言人梅利莎·麦卡尔维尔（Melissa McCarville）说：“我们预计不会对Ottumwa发电站的运营产生影响。”她补充说：“自2020年11月我们提交给EPA的申请以来，Alliant Energy继续采取措施完成池塘封闭并减轻环境影响。”