New Alabama Ash Pond Added to EPA List

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has added another Alabama Power ash pond to the list of those with a high hazard potential. It's a pond at the Gorgas Steam Plant* in Parrish in Jefferson County, one of six AlaPowCo coal fired plants in the state. The TVA has two. Listing the ash pond means there could be significant damage if the pond earthen walls were to break. The listing does not mean there is significant risk of those walls actually breaking. The focus on ash ponds by the Feds comes after a massive ash spill in Tennessee in December (pictured at the top of this posting). Ash from that spill is being transported to a commercial landfill just outside Uniontown in Perry County, Alabama. That process was the subject of a report I filed for WBHM Radio in Birmingham. Last week the EPA announced it would write new rules by 2012 regarding coal ash retention at power plants. The EarthJustice group posted first word of the Gorgas Plant status being changed.

[*A SIDE NOTE: The posting in the online Encyclopedia of Alabama on the Gorgas plant reads like a company news release. Alabama Power was one of the "Founding Sponsors" of the EOA project. Donating between $50,000 and $99,000 for the project. The encyclopedia promises all of the material in it will be "balanced, Fair, and intellectually honest." But it's hard to see much balance in that particular entry. In January 2009, one environmental group listed Gorgas as the 7th in the country for the amount of coal ash it generates. Another ranked it second in the country for the amount of arsenic in that coal ash. While that doesn't especially indicate any imminent danger to people living near the plant, a "balanced" report would include the information, the historic part Gorgas and other coal-fired plants played in the Birmingham area's poor air quality and information about its mercury emissions. However, the EOA's main entry about the company seems much more balanced.]