May 3: Two coal-fired power plants have risen for decades on opposite sides of the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico: twin engines generating immense power for several Western states and untold pollution that has fouled the air. , soil and water.
One of the giants, the San Juan Generating Station, closed in 2022 after operating for half a century south of the river. The Four Corners Power Station, built on the north side of the river in the early 1960s, was scheduled to close in 2031, but a proposed carbon sequestration system could extend its life.
Both plants represent an era most often referred to in the past tense.
Coal is increasingly seen as a dirty fuel, with chimneys spewing climate-warming particles and carbon dioxide, while coal-burning boilers create piles of toxic ash waste.
The toxin-laden ash has proven problematic at these plants located just 9 miles away, near Farmington and the Navajo Nation.
Most of the waste was channeled into sludge ponds or buried in pits on the site or in nearby mines. At least half of the ash disposal areas are unlined, posing a threat to groundwater and the river.
Utilities have made little effort to address leaking ash landfills and make them less harmful to the environment.
But that is changing.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued a new rule requiring companies to conduct a thorough inventory of on-site ash pits and remediate any that may leak contaminants into groundwater, regardless of their age.
Conservationists and community advocates praised the new rule, saying it was about time it forced utilities to clean up a dangerous mess that is contaminating valuable waters in a state that is becoming more arid with climate change.
“The San Juan River remains an important lifeline for the region,” said Robyn Jackson, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Diné CARE. “Any way the river is affected greatly affects that region.”
About 19 Navajo communities depend on the river for agriculture and traditional practices related to water and food, Jackson said, so ash pollution endangers their health and livelihoods.
Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, sulfur, selenium, nitrate and other heavy metals. Prolonged exposure to these wastes can cause kidney and liver damage, heart problems, and cancer.
An estimated 50 million tons of ash were disposed of at the San Juan site and 33.5 million tons at Four Corners.
Public Service Company of New Mexico is the majority owner of the defunct San Juan plant, and Arizona Public Service is the principal owner of the Four Corners facility. These two utilities will be tasked with identifying and remediating their ash waste on site under the rule.
A PNM representative gave a brief response to a list of emailed questions about how the utility will respond to the new requirements.
“We appreciate EPA’s focus on our transition to clean energy,” PNM spokesperson Kelly-Renae Huber wrote. “We will continue to comply with EPA regulations.”
APS spokesperson Mike Philipsen also gave a brief response on how the company will address the rule’s cleanup guidelines for Four Corners.
“APS is reviewing the Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule package for power plants… to understand the full impact on the generation sources APS uses to reliably power Arizona,” Philipsen wrote in an email. .
An important regulatory step
Conservationists say the rule has one glaring flaw: It does not require utilities to deal with millions of tons of ash used to fill mining excavation shafts, many of which are unlined near the aquifer and river.
Although the EPA has the authority to regulate waste at mining sites, the agency decided not to do so, despite the dangers of leaving ash in unsealed pits near the San Juan and Four Corners plants, said attorney Lisa Evans of the non-profit organization Earthjustice.
“Both locations are problematic and have documented contamination,” Evans said.
It will be up to the federal Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Compliance to issue a rule to address ash waste at mines, and so far it has been slow to do so, he said.
Still, new regulations requiring 100% cleanup of on-site ash are significant progress, he added, even compared to the Obama administration’s 2015 coal ash rule.
The 2015 rule only applied to locations that were still receiving waste or were at plants that were still producing electricity after the rule went into effect, essentially protecting legacy ash ponds.
Its limited scope was problematic because the oldest ash ponds and lagoons have the worst contamination, Evans said.
Earthjustice challenged the Obama rule, and in 2018, the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the EPA had erred in excluding legacy ponds from the regulation, given that these older discharge areas posed so much risk, if no larger than the newer ponds. .
The Trump administration did not comply with the court order, but President Joe Biden’s EPA did, Evans said.
As a basic measure, ash should be removed from unlined wells and ponds, Evans said. From there, it can be returned to lined disposal areas or recycled into construction materials such as cement, sheetrock, or road fill.
In some cases, if the soil where the waste is contained is dry enough, it can be capped or covered, he said.
Still, the coal and power industries have fought efforts to get them to better manage their coal waste and remediate pollution, Evans said. They have often prevailed through strong lobbying and well-funded campaigns.
But the transition to natural gas and now renewable energy is phasing out coal-fired electricity, making it less of a sacred cow, he said. “And the [Biden] “The administration’s explicit commitment to environmental justice is an important driver for ultimately cleaning up these toxic sites.”
Diné CARE’s Jackson agreed. After the Navajo suffered the brunt of the area’s ash pollution for many years (both in the water and in the air with what is known as “fugitive dust”), the government is taking the first major steps to protect them.
“Unfortunately, the new rules will not apply to all of those disposal areas,” Jackson said, referring to mining sites. “Those where it is applied, it will be very beneficial.”
Ash waste is a ‘big problem’
The ash residue became fodder for another legal battle at the San Juan plant.
The Sierra Club filed a complaint in 2010, alleging that ash deposited underground near the San Juan coal mine caused pollutants to flow down a stream into the river.
The defendants, who included PNM and the mine operator, disputed this argument, but ultimately agreed in a 2012 settlement to install a slurry wall along the creek to block runoff, wrote Sierra Club attorney Peter Morgan, in an email.
“We have always viewed the slurry wall as a temporary solution,” Morgan wrote. “We fully support additional investigations and efforts to clean up both the power plant site and the coal mine.”
The slurry wall should be reexamined as part of the plant’s inventory to ensure it is working as well as PNM officials say, said Mike Eisenfeld, energy and climate program manager for the San Juan Citizens Alliance, a nonprofit organization. defense of the environment.
The two plants were built near coal mines that could conveniently feed them, creating a waste loop so that ash filled the pits where the coal was mined, Eisenfeld said.
Energy and mining executives have repeatedly said they don’t think the huge amount of toxic ash the plants generated is a big problem because New Mexico doesn’t have rain to wash it into waterways, he said.
But, he added, research shows that waste can still leach into groundwater.
“We think it’s a big problem,” he said.
Importantly, the EPA rule mandates remediation of ash dumps not only at active coal-fired plants like Four Corners, but also at decommissioned ones like San Juan, Eisenfeld said. Otherwise, companies can walk away and leave the mess for taxpayers to clean up.
“The federal government finally decided it’s a problem,” Eisenfeld said. “I think there’s more recognition of what the potential problem is.”
