Greens settle coal suit with DHEC

SC governor's veto pen has hit education hardest
Greens settle coal suit with DHEC
Published: June 3, 2013
By SAMMY FRETWELL — sfretwell@thestate.com

After seven years of inaction, the state's environmental protection agency has agreed to seek public comment on a new – and potentially stricter – pollution discharge permit for a 1960s-era coal fired power plant west of Myrtle Beach.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control's decision was a victory for environmental groups that sued the agency last year over toxic coal ash discharges to the Waccamaw River.

DHEC's written agreement to issue a draft permit by Aug. 30 means the agency will gather public input and consider whether the plant's new discharge limits should be tougher.

DHEC let the permit expire seven years ago, allowing the plant to continue operating under the old discharge limits. The permit is among some 500 that DHEC discovered last year had expired, in some cases years ago.

"We fully expect that the new permit will include stricter, modern pollution controls to better protect Conway and South Carolina's environment," said Ulla Reeves of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, one of the groups that had sued DHEC over its failure to issue a new permit.

The lawsuit is part of a multi-pronged strategy by environmentalists to shutter the Grainger generating station and clean up coal residue that for decades has been put in waste ponds along the Waccamaw River. The residue contains toxins, such as arsenic. One of the waste ponds discharges to the river.

Environmentalists also have sued plant operator Santee Cooper in separate legal actions, seeking to force the ash to be removed from the ponds now that the Grainger station has closed. Santee Cooper wants to seal off the material and leave it at the site, but conservationists want it moved to a landfill to protect the river and groundwater.

Even though the Grainger plant has closed, it's important to issue a pollution discharge permit for the ash ponds because it will be three to five years before the coal ash is removed or Santee Cooper seals it off, environmentalists say. In the meantime, the company needs tougher limits on what continues to flow out of the ash ponds, said Frank Holleman, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Mark Plowden, a DHEC spokesman, said the agency already planned to take action called for in the lawsuit.

"The lawsuit filed did not ask for substantive, engineering, or environmental conditions on the permit; just that the permit application be reviewed," Plowden said. "Since (DHEC) had already required the review, there was no reason for a lawsuit and all parties agreed to drop it."

Holleman said he hopes DHEC's willingness to issue a permit will encourage Santee Cooper to settle his group's lawsuit against the power company and remove the ash from the Horry County power plant – rather than leave it in place.

According to research by Holleman's group, Santee Cooper has dumped 1.3 million tons of coal ash into the unlined ponds along the Waccamaw, a blackwater river that flows through a national wildlife refuge between Conway and Georgetown. Arsenic has been found in groundwater, which seeps into the river, at hundreds of times the safe drinking water limit in some instances.