Environmental groups in Pennsylvania claim a local contracting company has been improperly disposing of coal-ash waste at the La Belle coal mine dump.
Attorneys from the Environmental Integrity Project and Public Justice filed a notice of intent to sue local contracting company Matt Canestrale Contracting for allegedly disposing of hundreds of thousands of tons of coal-ash waste at La Belle, local news source timesonline.com reported.
The suit was filed on behalf the Citizens Coal Council and alleges that the company violated Pennsylvania’s Clean Streams Law, Air Pollution Control Act, and Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act as well as the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Clean Air Act.
The company disposes of coal generated by a GenOn Energy plant and a FirstEnergy plant.
The suit comes after FirstEnergy announced in January that they would ship 3 million tons of coal ash annually from the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, FirstEnergy’s largest, to “a mine reclamation project” in La Belle from January 2017.
FirstEnergy spokesman Mark Durbin told timesonline.com that the notice of intent to sue did not change the company’s plans to ship its coal-ash waste to the La Belle site.
“The coal combustion by-products must qualify for beneficial reuse in Pennsylvania,” he said.
“Based on our testing, we believe the material meets this criteria. What is getting lost in this discussion is the fact that the La Belle site is an abandoned mine storage site, which has its own impacts.”
“Using coal combustion by-product material for beneficial use will help mitigate many of these mine issues,” he added.
Coal combustion by-product includes coal-ash waste, Durbin said.
FirstEnergy initially applied for an expansion of their current coal-ash waste impoundment, Little Blue Run, to the state Department of Environmental Protection in July 2011.
The expansion was abandoned in December, after a federal judge approved a consent decree filed by the Department of Environmental Protection, requiring FirstEnergy to close the impoundment by 2016.
In the decree, the DEP said it had found sulfates, calcium and chlorides in water around the impoundment.
FirstEnergy was fined $800,000 and given until March 31 to submit a closure plan.
Environmental Integrity Project attorney Alayne Gobeille told timesonline.com that dumping coal-ash waste at La Belle is potentially harmful to nearby communities.
“It doesn’t make sense to ship the same toxic waste Pennsylvania acknowledges is a threat to health and the environment at the Little Blue Run impoundment to an unlined mine dump and call it beneficial.”
“Conditions at this site are not improving and the disposal of coal-ash waste under the guise of cleaning up mining pollution puts LaBelle residents in harm’s way, many of whom have contaminated seeps leaking onto their property or dangerous particulate matter pollution blowing onto their homes from Matt Canestrale Contracting’s operations,” he said.
