Coal-ash landfill plans jump hurdle

City Utilities hit an early stumbling block in efforts to expand its coal-ash landfill when the Missouri Department of Natural Resources wouldn’t grant preliminary approval for a handful of sites on the grounds of the John Twitty Energy Center last year.

Despite DNR identifying 100 sinkholes on the 1,000-acre property in 2012, CU leaned on the support of area legislators to change the law in its favor.

Rep. Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, with the guidance of CU, added an amendment to a DNR omnibus bill that allows the utilities provider to forego the preliminary review in favor of a detailed site evaluation. The amendment, under House Bill 28, was approved on the last day of the 2013 legislative session in May and became law on Aug. 28.

Now, a statewide environmental organization is crying foul about the legal maneuvering.

“If you or I wanted a landfill on our property to put coal ash, we would have to (complete) a several step process with the Department of Natural Resources,” said John Hickey, director of the Sierra Club’s Missouri chapter, adding DNR was right to reject CU’s proposals based on the Twitty Center’s karst topography. “You have groundwater contamination and various problems if it is not well constructed.”

DNR denied six potential landfill sites at the Twitty Center based on the land’s topography, which is a result of bedrock that dissolves easily when water seeps into cracks and faults creating caves and sinkholes.

According to its denial letter dated Sept. 20, 2012, 23 sinkholes were identified on the six sites, comprising roughly 250 acres, including one “open-throat” sinkhole where a rocky bottom could be exposed. The letter also noted at least five catastrophic sinkhole collapses in connection to the current hot-ash reservoir.

Coal ash is the byproduct of burned coal, and it can contain harmful materials such as mercury and arsenic that pose threats to groundwater. For 30 years, CU has stored coal ash in a landfill at the Twitty Energy Center and for 25 years, according to utility officials, CU has not been required to conduct groundwater testing in connection with the landfill.

“Obviously, those sites, from looking at them, do not have a significant potential for catastrophic collapse, and so we felt we should be able to move forward with a detailed site investigation,” said Steve Stodden, CU’s associate general manager of electric supply, noting the typical two-year process would identify environmental threats of the coal ash. “If we get into that detailed site investigation and there’s a problem with our site, we’ll move on to a different site.”

Before securing the law change, CU had appealed the results of the preliminary evaluation in April as it was working with Jefferson City lawmakers to get around the early denial.  

Stodden said CU officials believe the denials were a result of a broad interpretation of rules written in the 1990s designed to protect groundwater supply. He said, according to the applicable DNR rules, CU should have easily moved beyond the preliminary evaluation without the aid of the legislative fix.

Stodden considers the sinkholes identified by DNR as depressions in the ground that have the potential to become sinkholes, but that wouldn’t be clear until the detailed evaluation. He said the “collapse” events occurred in areas where ponds previously held hot ash from the bottom of the plant’s boilers. After the ponds were cleared of the ashy material and refilled, minor collapses would occur – each of which he said was remediated. CU took issue with the preliminary results because, according to Stodden, the agency assumed there were problems without having conducted a more detailed investigation of the land.

DNR spokeswoman Gena Terlizzi said each site at the Twitty Center was evaluated individually.

“These are not decisions that are made with broad strokes,” Terlizzi said.

The need for a landfill, according to Stodden, was identified as part of CU’s ongoing environmental assessment of future power-generating resources. CU is projecting roughly $7.5 million for the project, which would take about five years to complete.

Stodden said the problems with moving the landfill are twofold, beginning with transportation costs. Keeping the landfill at the southwest site is estimated to save CU and its ratepayers $125 million during the estimated 50-year life of the Twitty Energy Center. Also of concern are the potential neighbors of another site.

“It would go next to someone’s farm or next to someone’s house. That’s the nature of going off site. Right now, the community building around the JTEC site understands that it is a power-plant site,” Stodden said, adding the entire process would include public hearings and require the approval of Springfield City Council. “We had a pretty lengthy discussion over a water tower not that long ago. We understand, but if you think about the benign nature of a water tower versus trying to put in a utility waste landfill, it would be a whole different discussion.”

Hickey said DNR’s denial should be a clear sign to CU of future investigative results.

“Just because the legislature waved its magic wand and said the preliminary site investigation has gone from being rejected to being approved, it is still karst typography, there can still be groundwater contamination, and the Department of Natural Resources still has to say ‘yay’ or ‘nay,’” Hickey said, adding CU and ratepayers would ultimately foot the bill for the detailed evaluation conducted by an independently hired firm. “The science isn’t going to change.”

Stodden said CU has performed groundwater monitoring connected to the power plant landfill in the past, but DNR asked the utility provider to stop sending updates in 1988. As a provider of drinking water in Springfield, Stodden said the last thing CU wants to do is damage the city’s water supply.

“This was never about circumventing a rule so that we could not be protective of the environment. We have a long history of being protective of the environment, and we also run the water utility. Water quality protection is paramount to us,” Stodden said.

“What we think is that we can find a site at a JTEC location that would still be protective of the environment and save a tremendous amount of money for our customers. If it comes down to (a) critical flaw where we can’t do that, then we will have to look at our options at that time.”