Georgia Coal Ash Disposal Controversy Explained

This article is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to explain the workings of the Georgia Public Service Commission, a small but influential state-elected board that makes key decisions on everything from raising electricity bills to expanding renewable energy.

In 2019, when Georgia Power retired the Hammond Generating Station—a 65-year-old coal-burning facility near Rome—it was about more than just shutting down some machines and turning off the lights. It also raised the question of what to do with millions of tons of coal ash, a toxic byproduct of the combustion process, that were sitting in unsealed ponds on the banks of the Coosa River. Under Georgia Power’s plan, the contents of three of those ponds would be removed and placed in lined landfills elsewhere. But the coal ash in a fourth pond, deep enough to touch groundwater, would be capped and left in place.

The state’s Environmental Protection Division, or EPD, gave the plan the green light last fall, leading to opposition from both environmental advocates and the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal body with authority to clean up coal ash. This spring, the EPA rejected a similar coal ash cleanup plan in neighboring Alabama, throwing into question the future of Georgia’s plans and exposing both the difficulties of cleaning up coal ash waste and the alphabet soup of government agencies and regulatory schemes involved.

It’s not just Hammond. Georgia Power is in the process of retiring nearly all of its coal-fired power plants, raising big questions about how to dispose of the toxic waste they’ve produced over decades of operation. Here’s a primer on why coal ash matters, how Georgia Power plans to clean it up — and how much it’ll cost taxpayers.

Where does coal ash come from and what are the problems with it?

As it transitions to lower-emission energy sources, Georgia Power says it intends to close all but one of its coal-fired plants by 2028. In the process, it must figure out what to do with the estimated 92 million tons of coal ash the plants produced when they burned coal, most of which is currently stored on-site in coal ash ponds — tanks where the waste is submerged in water.

Coal ash contains at least 17 heavy metals, some of which are neurotoxins and carcinogens, including mercury, cadmium, and arsenic. Still, it’s not classified as hazardous waste, so it can be disposed of in landfills and waterways, and recycled into products like concrete. In 2023, the EPA found that coal ash contains levels of arsenic and radiation that pose a cancer risk.

According to a 2022 report by major environmental groups that used the industry’s own data, 91 percent of coal-fired power plants contaminate groundwater with toxic pollutants that exceed federal health standards. Well water tests near Plant Scherer—the largest coal-fired power plant in North America, located in Juliette, Georgia—have shown the presence of these contaminants.

Georgia Power oversees 29 coal ash ponds at 11 locations. The company plans to completely remove the ash from 20 of those ponds—“closure by removal,” Georgia Power says—and either ship it to landfills elsewhere or recycle it into construction materials such as cement and cinder blocks. (Georgia Power says 85 percent of the ash it produces can be reused this way.) For the remaining nine, the plan is to seal the ash ponds at the top and leave them where they are.

Advocates from groups like the Coosa River Basin Initiative and the Southern Environmental Law Center worry that such a strategy could contaminate groundwater and nearby waterways, and that the state’s approval of a landfill plan without containment could set a troubling precedent.

How should coal ash be disposed of?

According to a 2022 Earthjustice analysis, 94 percent of coal ash ponds in the U.S. are unlined. Ideally, advocates and researchers say, coal ash should be stored dry, in lined landfills that don’t come into contact with water, because water can cause contaminants to leach into the surrounding environment. In 2015, the EPA issued a set of guidelines for disposing of coal ash — or, as the agency calls it, the residue from burning coal. Those rules were “a major watershed moment,” said Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, executive director of the Coosa River Basin Initiative, which has criticized Georgia Power’s plans for Plant Hammond.

“The federal guidelines from 2015 are very clear and simple in their intent, which is: We can’t continue to store coal ash in water,” he said. “So if you know that coal ash is in groundwater, that’s a violation of federal regulations.”

While the EPA sets standards, it allows states to oversee coal ash disposal plans. The EPA says state-approved disposal plans must be “at least as protective as current federal regulations.” Georgia is one of three states that set its own standards. The permitting process is overseen by EPD, a division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

Is Georgia meeting EPA standards?

At Plant Hammond, Georgia Power plans to dig up three of four coal ash ponds and transfer their contents to a landfill. But despite EPA regulations, the state approved a plan in November 2023 to close the fourth pond and leave it in place — rather than move it to a safer location, as advocates had hoped. As the first such permit approved by EPD, it has been seen as a “barrier” to how the agency might consider other coal ash disposal plans at other shuttered plants across the state.

According to a 2022 ProPublica investigation, Georgia Power pressured the state to commit to a narrow interpretation of a key word in the EPA rule: “infiltration.” The state’s environmental protection department interprets that as prohibiting infiltration of water from above or from stormwater, but not water that might seep laterally or from below. In late June, the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected that argument in a lawsuit filed by the utilities challenging the EPA’s coal ash rule, Grist reported.

Last fall, the EPA sent a letter to Georgia EPD warning that the unsealed ponds might not comply with federal regulations; this spring, it rejected a similar cap-in-place plan in Alabama. Georgia Power rejected the criticism, saying, “We have consistently stated, and continue to maintain, that our plans to close the ash ponds are designed to comply with both federal and state (coal waste disposal) regulations.” EPD says it has plans to monitor areas around the unsealed coal ash ponds and take corrective action as needed.

How much does it cost Georgia Power customers to clean up coal ash statewide?

As the state’s energy regulator, the Public Service Commission, or PSC, is responsible for overseeing Georgia Power. The Georgia EPD, in accordance with EPA standards, determines the environmental impacts of coal ash disposal — but the PSC determines how much of that disposal cost taxpayers can cover. In 2019, the PSC voted to allow Georgia Power to pass on the cost of coal ash disposal to its customers on their electric bills. Total coal ash cleanup costs are estimated to be at least $8.96 billion by 2022, up from the $7.6 billion Georgia Power estimated the PSC approved in 2019.

The coal ash cleanup fee is included in a line item on customer bills called “Environmental Compliance Cost Recovery.” The total environmental compliance fee is calculated as about 12 percent of the base bill; according to the PSC, coal ash cleanup is about 17 percent of that 12 percent. So, for example, if the bill is $100, the environmental compliance fee would be about $12, of which about $2 would go toward coal ash cleanup. The rest covers other costs related to federal regulations, such as scrubbers at coal-fired power plants.

The Sierra Club sued to block the decision to charge customers, but the case settled in 2022 after the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear it. Critics see two intersecting problems. One is that Georgia Power is passing on the cost of cleaning up coal ash to customers; the other is that Georgia Power isn’t doing a good enough job of actually cleaning it up.

“You can’t ask taxpayers to pay for a substandard closure,” Demonbreun-Chapman said. “If you’re saying it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to close these ash ponds, you shouldn’t be able to get that back from taxpayers knowing we’re going to have to pay for it again when they come back and fix it.”

The PSC regulates not only Georgia Power’s electricity rates but also the company’s broader operations, including its plans to close coal-fired power plants and when they will be retired (coal still makes up 15 percent of the company’s energy mix).

What agencies are dealing with the coal ash problem and how can I contact them?

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: The Environmental Protection Agency’s website provides information about coal ash, regulations governing its disposal and specific spills. You can also contact the agency there with questions or concerns.

Georgia Department of Environmental Protection: EPD provides state-by-state coal ash information on its website, where you can enter your email address to sign up for updates. To contact the department, use this page.

Georgia General Assembly: In the legislature, the House Natural Resources & Environment Committee and the Senate Natural Resources and the Environment Committee oversee coal ash cleanup and can be contacted through their respective websites. You can also contact your own state legislators.

Nonprofit organizations: Georgia Coal Ash, run by a coalition of environmental and social justice groups, sends out email updates on the issue along with actionable steps, and its website is full of resources and links to detailed reports. The Georgia Water Coalition, which includes the Southern Environmental Law Center, the Georgia River Network, various riverkeepers from around the state and other environmental organizations, also deals with coal ash. Altahama Riverkeeper has been particularly involved in monitoring pollution around the Scherer Plant, and the Coosa River Basin Initiative is the place to go for information about the Hammond Plant.

PSC: The main avenues for PSC regulation are approval of the Integrated Resource Plan, a 20-year strategy that Georgia Power must review every three years, and the ratemaking process, a subsequent decision-making process in which commissioners determine how much consumers will pay (and how much profit will flow back to investors in Georgia Power, a private company with a “regulated monopoly” on the state’s electricity market). Here’s how you can contact the PSC.

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