There was ostensibly nothing illegal about the plume of sulfates approaching Clermont County, Ohio’s drinking water wells in 2019. When consumed, sulfates can cause diarrhea and dehydration. Worse, experts view it as an indicator of other, more dangerous chemicals present in the groundwater. And there was valid reason to suspect that might be the case in Clermont County. Adjacent to the wells sat the remains of the Walter C. Beckjord Power Plant, along with the waste it generated from 62 years of burning coal. In spite of their concerns, there was little county officials could do to address the issue. Neither state nor federal law obligated the power plant’s owners to prevent the potentially contaminated water from migrating offsite. In fact, it was only the owner’s decision to relocate some of the coal waste that ultimately subjected it to stricter cleanup requirements. Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom. Dave Altman represented more than 100 local residents who in 2021 threatened to sue Beckjord’s owners over the coal waste dumps. According to Altman, weak state and federal regulations allowed the contamination to spread unchecked for years. “It’s been spreading and there were not federal regulations for a long time, and Ohio just left it at that,” he said. “Now the chickens are coming home to roost.” Beckjord was not alone. In fact, it was one of 30 coal plants in Ohio - and 320 nationwide - that, for nearly a decade, occupied a glaring loophole in U.S. environmental regulations, leaving them effectively unbound by coal waste monitoring or cleanup requirements. On Thursday, the EPA moved to close that loophole. At issue in Clermont County were “coal combustion residuals” (CCRs), the fine gray ash left over when coal is burned. Over the past century, U.S. coal plants have produced roughly five billion tons of CCR, or enough to cover the entire state of Ohio in a layer an inch and a half... |