TERRE HAUTE, Ind. –– Plans to contain more than 9 million tons of coal ash in ponds at a former power plant on the banks of the Wabash River in Indiana have raised environmental concerns regarding flooding and groundwater contamination. 

“These basins lie feet – not yards, feet – from the Wabash River,” said Lorrie Heber, director of the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice, a ministry of the Sisters of Providence at St. Mary-of-the-Woods.

Heber spoke Monday after Duke Energy hosted a two-hour open house to hear questions about its application for a permit for coal ash disposal as required by new federal regulations.

Duke’s plan calls for five ash ponds to be consolidated into three at its power plant that closed last year after 63 years of operation. While the ponds would be capped in a manner similar to landfills, only one pond has a liner, said Heber, also a Wabash Valley Riverscape board member and chair of Riverscape’s coal ash committee.

Indiana ranks No. 1 in the country in total number of active and inactive coal ponds. However, the state has some of the weakest protections from coal ash, according to a report done by the Sierra Club in 2014. Of the 78 coal ash ponds in the state, five are considered high-hazard sites, 37 are considered significant hazard sites and there have been 15 documented cases of spills or water contamination from the ponds.

“I appreciate the fact that Duke had a public meeting,” Heber said. But she said the meeting was not fully satisfactory, as there were no formal presentations, just representatives to address individuals’ questions.

However, Duke spokeswoman Angeline Protegere said the company is committed to answering the public’s concerns.

“We’ll stay here as long as needed, as long as there are people with questions,” Protegere said. “It’s a constructive way to answer questions and take care of people’s individual issues.”

An Environmental Management Department official at the open house addressed concerns about the ash ponds’ proximity to the river.

“We took a tour of the ponds (Monday) and they sit up high enough, even with the river where it is right now, that all of those closure structures would be above where the water would be,” said Jeff Sewell, deputy assistant commissioner for the department’s office of land quality.

If, upon reviewing Duke’s plans, department engineers find a risk of flooding, the cover would have to be armored to withstand the water, Sewell said.

While Duke’s plan is built to withstand a once-in-100-year flood, Heber said, “Our climate is changing. We’ve had 500- and 1,000-year floods occur with regularity in the United States and the world in the past 10 years.”

Heber and others in attendance also had questions about potential groundwater contamination.  As Indiana has no law requiring liners for coal ash ponds, according to Earthjustice, Duke’s plans call for groundwater monitoring for 30 years, and sample monitoring the wells at least twice a year. 

But Heber calls that a “short-range plan. There is no proof of concept in how long these ponds can be managed over a period of time. They’re using landfill standards but very few landfills sit feet, not yards, from the Wabash River.”

Taylor writes for the Terre Haute, Indiana Tribune Star.