Five Republican and five Democratic senators, mostly from coal-rich states, introduced a bill that largely mirrors recently passed House legislation to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating disposal of coal ash for the first time.
The bill, whose main sponsor is Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., would block the EPA rule and instead let the states regulate the ash like municipal solid waste. Last week the House passed a highly similar bill fronted by Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va.
The EPA has proposed to classify coal ash under federal hazardous-waste management law, or let states regulate it as a non-hazardous waste. The proposed rule comes in the wake of coal-ash facility spills, including one in Kingston, Tenn., in 2008 in which 1 billion gallons of ash-containing liquid flooded the nearby area.
The bill’s sponsors are concerned about the possibility EPA could classify coal ash as hazardous waste, which they say would cause electricity rates to spike and increase costs for companies that reuse the ash in applications such as concrete. Their concerns reflect those raised by 12 Democrats and 34 Republicans who asked the EPA earlier this year to choose the non-hazardous waste option. The EPA has said it probably won’t issue a final rule this year.
“Years of research have shown that coal ash should not be regulated as a hazardous waste,” Hoeven said in a statement. “Doing so would only force unworkable requirements on our state’s utilities, resulting in serious economic consequences and the loss of good-paying jobs.”
Coal ash, left when coal is burned for electricity, contains trace amounts of toxic heavy metals such as chromium, arsenic and lead. Environmental groups contend some coal-ash sites don’t have proper safeguards and can leak those chemicals into groundwater, putting people at risk of premature death and serious diseases.
The bill would have to get through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. The senator said recently she would use “every tool at my disposal” to stop bills that would weaken EPA rules.
President Barack Obama opposes the House bill but has stopped short of a veto threat — a fact that McKinley has said suggests his bill has a shot of becoming law.
Top House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans praised the Senate bill. They said in a statement they expected the bill to “receive strong bipartisan support in the Senate as it did in the House and we look forward to seeing it signed into law.”
Environmental groups such as Earthjustice, a law firm and advocacy organization in Oakland, Calif., have said the research showing coal ash is non-hazardous is outdated and was shown by the National Academy of Sciences to be based on a testing procedure that doesn’t give accurate results for coal ash.
Earthjustice has also listed Texas as one of 12 states with the lowest level of regulation for coal ash disposal.
House Democrats including Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and environmental groups also contended that McKinley’s bill would fail to ensure coal-ash sites would be safe. And Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., has pointed to Tufts University research showing that EPA’s coal-ash rule could create up to 28,000 jobs for engineers and construction workers to build new coal-ash sites.
Here are the Hoeven bill’s co-sponsors:
Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.
Sen. Michael Enzi, R-Wyo.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.
