Coal pollution suit filed against Santee Cooper

Coal pollution suit filed against Santee Cooper

By SAMMY FRETWELL - sfretwell@thestate.com

Thursday, Jun. 07, 2012

Three environmental groups filed suit Wednesday against state-owned Santee Cooper over discharges of toxic arsenic, which they say is draining into the Waccamaw River from the utility's power plant in Conway.

Lawyers sued the company in an attempt to beat a deadline that bars certain suits by citizens groups against companies for violation of South Carolina's pollution control law. The 11th-hour filing angered business lobbyists, who said they had a compromise agreement with environmentalists to allow existing suits to continue while limiting any additional citizens lawsuits.

The Legislature banned citizens pollution suits Wednesday, but environmentalists say their case is valid because it was filed before Gov. Nikki Haley signed the bill. Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the governor put her signature on the bill Wednesday afternoon but did not say what time.

Santee Cooper's Grainger Generating Station.

Frank Holleman, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the legal action is important to help clean up pollution from Santee Cooper's Grainger coal-fired power plant, a now-closed facility with a history of arsenic contamination to groundwater. Waste lagoons, which store 650,000 tons of coal ash, are leaking from the property, the suit says.

"This is the last chance for citizens to go to court in order to ensure the Waccamaw River is protected from these coal ash lagoons," Holleman said Wednesday night. "Santee Cooper's plan ... is to leave this coal ash beside the Wacccamaw River in perpetuity."

Specifically, the law center says it wants a court to order Santee Cooper to remove coal ash from the lagoons and put it in a lined landfill, rather than leave it there as the company plans. Coal ash contains arsenic that can wash into groundwater and waterways. Santee Cooper's coal ash lagoons sit on the banks of the Waccamaw River in a low-lying area susceptible to leakage, the center says. The lagoon walls also might break, the center says.

The Waccamaw River is lazy blackwater stream used heavily by boaters and fishermen near the bustling resort of Myrtle Beach. The Grainger plant is a visible landmark for tourists traveling on U.S. 501 to the beach.

Mollie Gore, a spokeswoman for Santee Cooper, acknowledged contamination in groundwater beneath the Grainger plant but said her company's testing shows arsenic is not getting into the Waccamaw River. At the same time, people living near Conway get their drinking water from a public water system, not groundwater, she said. She said the company was working with the Department of Health and Environmental Control to resolve the issue.

"This is a situation that is confined to our property," Gore said, noting that the company "has been actively working on a resolution for some time. But there is no issue of a threat to human health."

Like utilities across the state and nation, Santee Cooper is struggling with a legacy of burning coal to make power. For generations, the company has relied on coal-fired power plants, but with increasing questions about the polluting nature of coal, utilities are looking to either close old plants or retrofit them to use cleaner-burning energy.

The company no longer is operating the 1960s-era Grainger plant and is considering a permanent shut down. SCE&G;, headquartered in Cayce, announced last week it is closing two power stations – including one on Lake Murray – rather than pay the cost of upgrading them with expensive air pollution control equipment.

The law center is handling the lawsuit for three environmental groups: the S.C. Coastal Conservation League, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Waccamaw Riverkeeper.

"We took this action because coal ash poses a significant threat to our rivers and the quality and health of our water," said Dana Beach, director of the Coastal Conservation League.

Wednesday's lawsuit would be at least the fifth filed since a 2011 state Supreme Court decision reinforced the public's right to sue for enforcement of South Carolina's pollution control law. One such suit is by the law center over coal ash pollution of groundwater at SCE&G;'s coal-fired power plant on the Wateree River in lower Richland County. Another challenges a port dredging plan along the Savannah River. Suits also have been filed in Charleston and Myrtle Beach over other pollution issues.

Fearing that more suits would occur, big business interests persuaded the Legislature to change the law to bar additional suits in the future. The House signed off on the plan Wednesday, said Otis Rawl, president of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce. Rawl said he was disappointed in the Southern Environmental Law Center's action.

"This flies in the face of everything we were trying to get worked out," Rawl said.