Leak report challenged

GENTRY — Southwestern Electric Power Co.’s Northwest Arkansas coal plant has leaked chromium into groundwater at a level higher than is allowable, three environmental organizations say. SWEPCO said, however, that the occurrence was only once, in October 2009, and all testing since then indicates the coal-ash landfill at the Flint Creek coal-fired electric plant at Gentry is well below governmental limits.

Based on a report released last week and produced by three environmental organizations, the Sierra Club said SWEPCO’s 33-year-old Flint Creek plant has “contaminated groundwater around its coal ash landfill at a level 1.28 times the federal drinking water standard for chromium.”

But all quarterly sampling since October 2009 has shown chromium levels at least 75 percent below the federal drinking-water standard, said Peter Main, a SWEPCO spokesman.

SWEPCO is required to report to the federal government levels of chromium, said Main and a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. SWEPCO is not in violation of federal regulations, Main said.

The report, titled “[Environmental Protection Agency’s] Blind Spot: Hexavalent Chromium in Coal Ash,” says 28 coal-fired plant sites, most of which have unlined landfills or ponds, have leaked chromium into groundwater at levels higher than the government allows.

Hexavalent chromium is highly toxic even in small amounts and can cause cancer. Chromium that leaks from coal ash is “nearly 100 percent hexavalent chromium,” the report says, quoting the EPA. But in the federal agency’s proposed rule-making for coal ash, the EPA treated coal ash as a carcinogen by inhalation only, said Lisa Evans, author of the 15-page environmentalists’ report and senior administrative counsel with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm in Washington, D.C.

“We’re raising concerns that these coal-ash dumps leak chromium and people should be concerned and the government should take action,” Evans said in an interview.

A liner to contain chromium leakage from the coal-ash landfill at Flint Creek is being installed and is scheduled to be finished next year, Main said. SWEPCO’s coal-fired power plant under construction in Hempstead County will be fitted with liners at its landfill that will exceed current federal requirements, Main said.

The report is a collaboration of Earthjustice; Physicians for Social Responsibility, a Washington organization that seeks to prevent nuclear war, to reverse global warming and stop degradation of the environment; and the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington based nonprofit organization of former governmental environmental lawyers that seeks what it calls effective enforcement of environmental laws.