By: NRECA
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in December it will not issue new regulations this year on disposal of bottom ash, fly ash, and other coal combustion byproducts (CCBs) from power plants. Currently, EPA considers CCBs as “non-hazardous waste.” But, in the wake of a coal ash spill last December, there is enormous political pressure for the agency to reclassify CCBs as “hazardous.” EPA said it is still working to finish an analysis of potential regulation, which is too complex to finish quickly, and will complete its work in the “near future.”
It appears that NRECA and other stakeholders have raised enough issues for EPA to reconsider its proposal. Those issues included an NRECA and American Public Power Association request for EPA to convene a Small Business Advisory Panel to consider impacts of a hazardous designation on small businesses, including electric cooperatives. NRECA strongly opposes designating CCBs as hazardous because they are used in a wide variety of beneficial applications, including concrete, wallboard, and others, that displace the use of raw materials.
NRECA expects the agency to recommend regulating CCBs as hazardous waste. NRECA is still working with others in the industry to urge EPA to retain the current non-hazardous designation, as the agency did when it considered this issue in 2000. NRECA is talking with legislative leaders to try to keep EPA from proposing a hazardous designation. (A joint letter from AEPCO and GCSECA went to each member of Arizona’s Congressional Delegation and to Governor Brewer.)
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