After nearly 20 years as the subject of North County community meetings, fly ash made it to the General Assembly yesterday. And the reception was not enthusiastic.
Members of the House Environmental Matters Committee sharply questioned supporters of a proposed bill to strictly regulate uses of the fine gray powder left over from the burning of coal. They asked how dangerous the ash could be if the state Department of the Environment has not found it to be hazardous and if the state Department of Transportation uses it to build roads.
Del. George W. Owings III, a Calvert County Democrat, asked representatives from the Sierra Club and Clean Water Action, an environmental group, whether they think there is a "grand conspiracy of the highest levels if the Department of Transportation, scientists and the Department of the Environment are saying it is not hazardous in unclassified documents, and yet you are saying that it is?"
Mary Marsh, legislative chair for the Sierra Club, said that what is considered hazardous for roads and concrete is substantially different from what is considered hazardous for a glass of drinking water.
"We're taking a precautionary principle here that this is not something you want to be drinking," she said. "In the past, there have been many instances when people say something isn't hazardous in the beginning and then later we find that maybe things weren't such a great idea."
The bill, written by Del. Mary M. Rosso, a Pasadena Democrat and longtime advocate of regulating fly-ash disposal, would require owners of coal-burning power plants -- namely Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. -- to follow strict guidelines for fly-ash disposal.
Critics say the ash, 3 million tons of which is piled in sections of an industrial park off Solley Road, blows on windy days into a nearby schoolyard and could be leaking into the county's aquifers. Fly ash contains dozens of heavy metals, 12 of which are listed as hazardous wastes by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Rosso's bill would require the company to build a clay liner at least 30 inches thick under any disposal site that does not have one and would prohibit the use of fly ash as "structural fill," a stand-in for concrete and other sturdy compounds in some instances. The bill also would require the company to monitor air and water quality.
BGE, industry lobbyists and representatives of coal manufacturers criticized the bill's structural-fill provision. BGE's and other plants recycle as much as 90 percent of the ash on unrelated projects. The alternative is to put the ash into landfills, which they argued would waste resources.
Others complained that the bill would prevent projects similar to those in Western Maryland that used the ash to fill old mines, preventing leftover metallic acid from draining into waterways.
Rosso said she has added an amendment that would not prohibit those uses and would impose restrictions only on using the ash as a base for an industrial park, something BGE has done across Solley Road from the disposal site.
The clay liner issue was largely ignored. An Anne Arundel circuit judge has ordered BGE to build a $10 million liner under the Pasadena site, but the utility has asked the Court of Special Appeals to review the decision.
Despite the committee's lack of enthusiasm, Rosso made it clear that after 10 years as head of the Coalition of Communities and Citizens Against Fly Ash, she will persevere.
"No matter how far it gets, I'm not giving up," she said after the meeting. "As long as I am in office, this bill is going in every year until we get it right."
Pub Date: 3/17/99