1 D1. Economic, Energy, and Engineering Geology

Friday, 20 March 2020
8:00 AM - 9:40 AM
Lake Thoreau

EXTINCTION IS FOREVER! A FURTHER REASON FOR STRICT CONTROL OF INDUSTRIAL FLY ASH AND POWER PLANT DISCHARGE PRODUCTS

Paper number: 1-4
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:00 AM – 9:20 AM

Authors

Abstract

The generation of electrical power by burning of coal has been shown to be clearly inefficient, when compared with the use of either gas or fuel oil. Further, waste products associated with coal burning plants (chiefly fly ash) are responsible for a number of deleterious environmental effects that are both potentially harmful to the health of human and animal life and which require the controversial, yet demonstrably necessary, treatment and safe disposal of all such wastes. To the Nation’s credit, most States now strictly disallow any on-site storage of fly ash.

The long continuing and laudable efforts of environmental “watchdog” groups, such as the Mobile Baykeepers, have supplied irrefutable evidence of how leaching of the exposed 600 acre fly ash waste site at the Barry Steam Plant 25 miles north of Mobile, Alabama created levels of arsenic, lead, mercury, cobalt, selenium and other metals in the groundwater and surface water runoff that, on occasion, far exceed those allowable by regulations imposed by the EPA and the State of Alabama. The impact on the immediately adjacent Mobile Delta River System, often termed “America’s Amazon” because of its rich biodiversity, has been further exacerbated by discharge of power plant cooling waters whose low dissolved oxygen content and elevated temperatures frequently exceed maximum target levels. Collectively these create a “thermal dead zone” several miles in length (both up and down the river), from a point where discharge waters from the plant enter the Mobile River. This zone is clearly visible on LANDSAT satellite imagery and has been implicated in the marked demise of anadromous fish species, such as the Gulf Sturgeon and Stripped Bass. Future plans by the power company to simply “de-water” and cover the waste pile and construct a redundant dike system around the waste site have been shown by a similar attempt elsewhere in the State to be ineffective in addressing the problems. Environmental groups are now urging the total removal and relocation of the fly ash to dry, lined landfills as is mandated elsewhere in a number of States in the Southeast, as a means of safe-guarding the watershed.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 52, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2020SE-344228

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