EPA warns of potential coal ash concerns at West Virginia plant

As part of an ongoing comprehensive review of dam integrity of coal ash impoundment sites nationwide, the US Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said that it has determined that an impoundment at American Electric Power's Philip Sporn facility in West Virginia requires additional safety testing.

An impoundment is a pond at a coal-fired power plant that holds waste water and coal wastes in a slurry.

Following the failure of an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority's facility in Kingston, Tennessee, in December 2008, EPA has been conducting on-site evaluations at electric utility sites nationwide to determine the impoundments' structural integrity.

A storage pond from TVA's Kingston coal-fired generating station was breached and 5.4 million cubic yards of wet coal ash spilled into a nearby river and covered about 300 acres surrounding the facility.

Addressing the AEP facility, EPA said that while it "does not believe the impoundment's dam is at immediate risk of failure given the information we currently have, out of an abundance of caution the agency" has notified officials in West Virginia and Ohio of the need for further testing to fully determine the impoundment's integrity.

EPA spokeswoman Latisha Petteway said Ohio officials were notified because the Ohio River is on the border between West Virginia and Ohio, so if there was a spill from the facility, that river could be affected.

AEP has committed to submitting a plan to carry out the safety tests and said the plan will be provided to EPA on November 2, the federal agency said. EPA said it will oversee the testing and use all necessary authority to assure the safety of the facility.

As part of that effort, EPA contractors identified factors at the AEP facility that are similar to the Kingston facility--specifically, both facilities piled coal ash and bottom ash around the impoundment to raise the impoundment's walls, EPA noted.

To ensure the impoundment's stability, EPA is requiring AEP to conduct two tests: a liquefaction test to determine if the foundation will become unstable under certain pressures, and a slope stability test to determine if the impoundment's embankment will fail under certain pressures.

To date, EPA has completed reports on assessments of impoundments for 22 facilities.

--Paul Ciampoli, paul_ciampoli@platts.com

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