Coal ash ponds at Dominion Virginia Power stations in Bremo Bluff and Chesterfield County are among 21 facilities in five states leaching contaminants into surrounding water, in some cases in excess of federal standards for drinking water and aquatic life, according to a report by Duke University scientists published Friday in a scientific journal.
“The magnitude is different for various reasons, but the evidence for leaking was everywhere,” said Avner Vengosh, a professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.
Vengosh’s team took 39 samples from surface water and seeps from berms ringing the unlined ponds at seven sites in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia. The scientists also examined water chemistry data that had been compiled by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality from 156 shallow groundwater monitoring wells near coal ash ponds at 14 power stations in that state.
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The work used “forensic tracers” — distinctive isotope ranges of boron and strontium, two elements found in coal ash effluent — a technique that Vengosh says enables scientists to distinguish between boron and strontium from other natural sources and the particular isotopes unique to coal ash.
At sites in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia, the high concentrations of boron and strontium and the distinctive isotope variations found were “strong evidence for the discharge of coal ash pond water to local surface water,” the report says.
The peer-reviewed study — published by Environmental Science and Technology, a publication of the American Chemical Society — was paid for by the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has been waging legal battles against coal ash facilities in North Carolina and Virginia and pressing state agencies for more protective closure requirements.
A spokesman in the organization’s Charlottesville office referred questions to Vengosh, who said the funding source played no role in the findings.
“It was reviewed by five independent reviewers for the top-level journal in our field,” he said. “This is scientific data and independently evaluated by other people.”
The team did not test groundwater in Virginia as part of the study, and Vengosh said the researchers did not ask for access to Dominion’s property or the network of monitoring wells installed near the ash ponds. A Dominion spokesman, Robert Richardson, said the company would review the study.
“We’ve demonstrated our commitment to the environment over decades of our work in Virginia, and our plan to close coal ash ponds is safe and protective of groundwater,” Richardson said.
Barry Sulkin, an environmental scientist and co-author of the study, said that while in most cases coal ash facilities are legally permitted to discharge to surrounding waterways through regulated outfalls, where contaminants are generally required to meet certain limitations, the team’s findings shows the ponds also are leaking in other, unpermitted ways.
For both Virginia sites, the James River upstream of the facilities was used to set background levels for concentrations of a range of substances, from boron and strontium to arsenic, chromium, iron, lead, selenium, vanadium and zinc, among others.
At Bremo, samples were taken from Holman Creek, a leak from the ash pond wall that was running toward the river and the river itself downstream of the power plant, Vengosh said. One test, for example, showed arsenic at a concentration of 45.4 parts per billion, more than 45 times background levels and 4.5 times the federal Environmental Protection Agency drinking water maximum contaminant level of 10 parts per billion. Another test showed arsenic at 10.7 parts per billion.
At Chesterfield, boron was eight times background levels in one sample and more than four times higher in another. Arsenic was 17.4 parts per billion in one sample, 17 times the background level and well above the federal maximum contaminant level.
One test also found a concentration of selenium, a metal that can be toxic in certain concentrations, above the EPA’s National Recommended Water Quality Criteria for Aquatic Life, which the agency says is the “highest concentration of specific pollutants or parameters in water that are not expected to pose a significant risk to the majority of species in a given environment.”
In both sets of tests, though not in every instance, concentrations of other metals, such as iron, manganese, vanadium and zinc, registered many times background limits. Others, like chromium and lead, were barely above background testing levels, if they showed up at all.
“We see different levels of contamination in different sites, which reflects different practices,” Vengosh said.
Pursuant to new federal regulations on coal ash facilities that came in the wake of major spills in Tennessee and North Carolina, Dominion and Appalachian Power are currently in the process of closing ash ponds at six facilities across Virginia, though some environmental groups and lawmakers have said the plans do not go far enough to protect water sources from continued leaking of the host of toxic metals the ash can contain.
Some residents who live near Dominion’s Possum Point also have raised concerns about contaminants that have shown up in tests of their private drinking water wells, though no evidence has linked the metals to coal ash ponds there.
Vengosh said his team also is examining water from wells near coal ash sites in North Carolina and would consider well testing in Virginia “depending on funding availability.”
The networks of monitoring wells at coal ash sites have identified “localized impacts on station property, but no impacts have been identified offsite,” said Richardson, the Dominion spokesman.
Those monitoring networks will be expanded under the permit process for capping the existing ash ponds, and sampling will be conducted for at least 30 years, he added.
“Should results indicate groundwater impacts during that time, Dominion will be required to clean up the groundwater and provide additional protections,” Richardson said.
Only two coal ash facilities in Virginia, Dominion’s Chesapeake Energy Center and Appalachian’s Clinch River plant, are currently subject to surface water monitoring, said Ann Regn, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Both are subject to additional testing because of unique permit requirements.
“Each of the facilities is different as to what is being discharged,” she said.
The operator is usually responsible for conducting the sampling and reporting to the DEQ, which conducts broader evaluations of water quality across the state.
She said the department would examine the Duke report.
“All we can say is it’s interesting; there’s a lot of information to look at,” Regn said. “We’re going to have to see where they collected the samples and how.”
The DEQ considers its existing standards and regulations adequate, though Regn added that how the ash is managed is subject to the “legislative process” and noted that the EPA declined to classify it as a hazardous waste in its landmark 2014 coal ash rule.
“We haven’t seen any evidence of harm to the environment,” she said. “We’re pretty confident that how we’ve been handling it all these years has been appropriate.”
Jamie Brunkow, the James River Association’s Lower James riverkeeper, said the Duke results confirm long-standing suspicions about the unlined pits that comprise the vast majority of coal ash storage sites. With most of Virginia’s facilities currently planned to be “capped in place,” he hoped the Duke results will inform the debate this summer on permits the DEQ is considering for sites in Chesterfield, Chesapeake, Clinch River and elsewhere.
“I just don’t know that we can say that putting a liner on top of these is going to meet our goals as far as protecting the river,” he said.