EPA decision could spell doom for Ohio’s biggest coal plant
A recent U.S. EPA decision could mean the beginning of the end for Ohio’s largest coal-fired power plant.
The agency announced that it has denied the James M. Gavin plant in Gallia County permission to keep dumping potentially toxic coal ash into an unlined pond.
The EPA gave the facility on the banks of the Ohio River near Cheshire 135 days to find another way to dispose of the ash. If it can’t find one, the plant may eventually have to shutter. An EPA representative was not able to immediately answer questions about what consequences the Gavin plant would face if it does not comply with the ruling.
Environmentalists praised the decision, “although it is a little frustrating that we didn’t have faster action,” said Neil Waggoner, senior representative for the Sierra
Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
The Boston private equity firm that owns the plant has not commented on the decision, but coal supporters see the move as another phase of a long-running campaign to shut down their industry.
“Friday’s decision by the USEPA to deny a renewal permit by the Gavin Plant’s operator for fly ash disposal is just another example of the Biden Administration crusade to close all coal-fired baseload generation,” Ohio Coal Association President Mike Cope said in an emailed statement that used an alternate term for coal ash.
President Joe Biden has pledged to cut the nation’s carbon emissions in half by 2030, which requires a switch to renewable power. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report last summer that said carbon emissions must drop rapidly if the world is to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Nearly everyone seems to agree that the Gavin plant is unlikely to survive in the long run thanks to a regulatory climate that is no longer hospitable to coal, and economic changes that are moving the power grid toward natural gas and renewable energy.
Coal ash regulations were finalized in the last year of the Obama Administration but went unenforced under President Donald Trump. It wasn’t until earlier this year that the Biden Administration signaled it would revoke permission for some coal plants to dump ash into unlined ponds.
“Limiting the contact between coal ash and groundwater after closure is critical to minimizing releases of contaminants into the environment and will help ensure communities near these facilities have access to safe water for drinking and recreation,” the EPA wrote in a news release announcing the decision.
The release said groundwater monitoring around the ash pond is inadequate and the Gavin plant failed to conduct an appropriate statistical analysis of contamination data.
Cope said the U.S. EPA’S decision could disrupt the power grid that energizes Ohio.
“There is no coordinated effort by the Biden Administration to be certain their agencies’ actions do not disrupt the grid,” he said. “We remain hopeful that the operators of Gavin will find a way to comply with the orders, that is if the U.S. EPA fairly considers alternatives, and I am not hopeful about that probability.”
The Gavin plant is responsible for roughly 11% of the power generated in Ohio. Representatives for PJM Interconnection, which oversees the grid that supplies electricity to Ohio, 12 other states and the District of Columbia, say the grid could weather the loss of the Gavin plant.
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