Coal Ash: Then and Now

In the summer of 1979, a group of friends of mine and I forded a back channel of the upper Allegheny River in Warren, Pennsylvania to camp on an island situated adjacent to a coal fired electric generation plant. To get there we had to hike past the ash pit that had accumulated over years of generating electricity.

The pits were being services and the orange-brown effluent was obvious in the low-lying areas. Though the site was ugly, the island was small and uninhabited except for a few birds and snakes that frequented the forested spit of land. The water in the main channel are as cold as the bottom of a reservoir but the back channel was extremely warm "fresh" from cooling the machinery. The Kinzua Dams is only a few miles upstream from this site.

These ash pits were located only a few feet above "normal pool elevation" and would periodically get flooded when the river flow was high.

since that day in 1979 the coal burning plant was closed and the ash pits remediated. Sometime around 1990 the ash was dug up and relocated at a higher elevation. It was still on-site, but it was sealed in an area with an impervious bottom lining and top cover. With the rain kept at bey the amount of run-off has been minimalized. The water that does leak out does so via a drain into a catch basin where it can be removed and treated.

This third image is the aerial view of the site now. Ash storage is in the upper left quadrant. The square catch basin is clearly in the center and the location of the former pits along the river are now grassy fields. There is no coal pile ready to be burned and no smoke and CO2 to foul the air.

Such sites can be rehabilitated, but should only be done so at the expense of the utilities that were for so long allowed to neglect the "externalities" of their business model, i.e. land, air and water pollution.

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