Martin County, Ky. coal ash spill circa 2000

 The dangers associated with waste from coal-fired power plants got some attention last month when a billion gallons of coal ash spilled from a storage pond in Tennessee, contaminating surface waters with arsenic, mercury and lead. Michigan has plenty of its own problems stemming from coal ash contamination, regulators and environmentalists say, but because the ash is stored underground the problems have largely gone unnoticed.

Stored in unsecured landfills, coal ash can leach toxins into groundwater, endangering the ecosystem of the Great Lakes, which contains 20 percent of the world’s fresh water.

The North Lansing Landfill, operated by the Lansing Board of Water and Light (BWL), is among 24 coal ash dumps identified in a 2007 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report as sites of “proven damage” to groundwater.

Lithium, manganese, potassium, selenium and strontium have been detected in the groundwater under the landfill.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality confirmed the EPA report that some toxins have migrated off the dump site and that beyond the border of the landfill lithium is present in the groundwater above levels considered safe for drinking water.

“We have a time bomb ticking in Michigan,” said Lee Sprague, clean energy campaign manager for the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club. “[Toxins from coal ash] will get into the water table.”

BWL, which is also responsible for providing water for 55,000 customers in the city, is quick to point out the city gets its drinking water from the Saginaw aquifer, which is located below the contaminated glacial aquifer and is separated from it by a layer of shale.

BWL has spent several million dollars to build a clay slurry wall around the dump to keep the toxins from further migrating into the soils and water.

Utility officials say the wall will connect with the shale that separates the aquifers to create a “bathtub” around the contaminated dump. A not-yet-completed pumping system will pump the contaminated water out of the “bathtub,” and it will be treated to remove toxins.

But environmentalists warn that openings in the natural clay and shale that form the bottom of the dump’s “bathtub” can allow toxins to migrate from one aquifer to another.

“We have a time bomb ticking in Michigan,” said Lee Sprague, clean energy campaign manager for the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club. “[Toxins from coal ash] will get into the water table.”

“Lansing officials claim they have an impenetrable barrier,” he said, “but there is no known landfill that is completely successful.”

Following the 300-acre spill of coal ash in Tennessee in December, the Lansing State Journal interviewed BWL spokesman — and former Journal editorial page editor — Mark Nixon about environmental safety at the North Lansing Landfill.

“We have created an impenetrable wall,” Nixon said, adding that the wall will prevent ash spills and seepage.

The story did not mention the existing groundwater contamination around the landfill, which is what prompted the construction of the slurry wall.

When contacted for comment about the EPA report identifying the North Lansing Landfill as a “site of proven damage” to groundwater with “potential human health risk,” Nixon said that he had not read the EPA report and referred questions on this to environmental services manager Nick Burwell.

Burwell explained that the coal ash dump was originally a gravel pit, and for years ash from the city’s coal-fired power plant was dumped in the pit.

Over time the ash compressed and filtered through the gravel at the bottom of the pit. Then, in an unlucky turn of events, the water table rose, saturating the ash and resulting in contamination of the aquifer.

“We didn’t know everything that we know now [when the North Lansing Landfill was developed],” Burwell said. “These days we would never situate a landfill in a gravel quarry pit.”

As for the toxins that have already escaped from the dump over the decades, Jim Arduin, the Department of Environmental Quality geologist who oversees the BWL remediation project, says that the focus of the project is only to stop further toxic seepage from ash in the landfill. The plan is to monitor, not remove, the existing off-site groundwater contamination.

“They will evaluate the effect that this source control will have on … groundwater contamination,” Arduin said, “and after more evaluation will determine if further efforts will be required.”

Toxic ash seepage discovered at Consumer’s Energy dump

In Bay City, where the state’s largest electricity provider, Consumer’s Power, has its Karn-Weadock coal-fired plant, and where it has applied to build an additional coal power plant, seepage from an ash dump has contaminated the nearby Saginaw Bay.

According to the Bay City Times, the pollution only became widely known in fall of 2008, when an environmental group researching Consumers Energy’s plans for a new plant discovered state DEQ records detailing seepage of arsenic, boron and lithium in excess of state standards.

Saginaw DEQ officials were unavailable to speak with Michigan Messenger.

“We don’t need coal to live. We do need water. For the short-term use of coal we are threatening essential resources.”

Terry L. Walkington, supervisor of the DEQ Waste and Hazardous Materials Division in Bay City recently told the Bay City Times that mercury, a toxin that is bioaccumulative and affects brain development, has been found outside the landfill at levels that exceed state standards.

As in Lansing, power company officials in Bay City plan a multimillion-dollar slurry wall around the dump to limit seepage of toxins.

Sprague of the Sierra Club said that the migration of toxins from coal ash dumps should be considered as the state evaluates the several pending proposals for new coal plants.

“All the ‘clean coal’ rhetoric means is taking pollutants from the air stream and putting pollutants in the landfill where there is a greater chance for pollutants to leach into water,” Sprague said.

“We don’t need coal to live. We do need water. For the short-term use of coal we are threatening essential resources.”