Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank you.

Just 3 days before Christmas in 2008, the coal ash impoundment--and ``impoundment'' is just another word for giant swimming pool--burst in Kingston, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion gallons of toxic sludge that blanketed the nearby Emory River. That toxic stew that flowed out, a billion gallons into the river, destroyed homes and 300 acres of surrounding land, creating a Superfund site that could cost up to $1.2 billion to remediate. Since this incident, the EPA has identified 49 other giant pools of coal ash across the country that are designated as high hazard.

This means that if these impoundments were to fail, then it's not just the land that would be damaged, but human life would likely be lost.

This Republican bill purports to be a solution to what happened in Tennessee. It claims to create standards
for these giant pools that would ensure a TVA catastrophe won't happen again. But in fact it excludes safety requirements such as just accounting for earthquakes or surface erosion. And even worse, the very minimal requirements that are included in this bill only apply to new impoundments there are built starting 3 years after this bill is enacted. That's right. Nothing even starts for 3 years. And it's got to be brand new.

So more than 430 impoundments that we know of and are in use today are not even going to be covered by this bill. And they have been built by old standards, not by the new standards. That's like finding a fatal flaw in a car that's on the road, but only requiring car companies to fix the ones that have not yet been built and won't even come on the road for 3 years. Or, like finding E. coli in chicken on grocery store shelves. But rather than issuing a recall today for the stuff that's on the shelves, they say there are rules that are going to go in place 3 years from now so just let the contaminated poultry continue to be sold.

This amendment is a simple fix to this problem. It would require all impoundments to meet minimal safety criteria in this Republican bill. Those facilities that cannot meet basic requirements such as installing a liner so that this toxic coal sludge doesn't seep into the soil and the groundwater will have 10 years to close their doors.

Unless this amendment is passed, disposal of coal ash in unlined, unsafe pits will be allowed to continue. In Missouri, there is an unlined impoundment that has been leaking more than 50,000 gallons of toxic liquid a day since 1992. It would not have to be fixed. Let me repeat that. Fifty-thousand gallons of toxic liquid a day since 1992 has been leaking out of that toxic facility, and it wouldn't have to be fixed under that bill. What are you saying to the people in Missouri?

In Princeton, Indiana, a wet coal ash impoundment built in an earthquake fault area discharged dangerous slurry when an earthquake struck nearby last year. The spill contaminated a national wildlife refuge with selenium. A wetland that is home to an endangered bird species had to be drained and 50 tons of fish had to be buried. This Republican bill would allow that impoundment to continue receiving coal ash as well.

After the Kingston accident in 2008, the Tennessee Valley Authority approved a plan to voluntarily phase out all of their coal ash ponds in 10 years and to eliminate high-risk storage facilities that pose a danger to people and property if they were to fail. If they can do it, shouldn't the other companies be able to do it as well?

We shouldn't have to wait for another catastrophe like Kingston to happen before we require these basic safety measures to be employed at all coal ash ponds.

I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this amendment.

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Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Two weeks ago, scientists at a massive facility in Europe announced that they may have discovered a particle that travels faster than the speed of light--a discovery that would turn Einstein's theory of special relativity upside down, a discovery that, if true, would revolutionize the way we see the world. The news spurred a massive amount of interest. Headlines read: ``Back to the Future,'' and media stories even speculated on how this discovery could be exploited to enable real-life time travel.

However, it seems Republicans have already figured out how to get around Einstein's theory, because today the House will vote on a piece of legislation that will blast us right back in time to the start of the Industrial Revolution. This bill says no matter what EPA learns about the sludge that comes out of coal-fired plants, no matter how high the concentrations of poisonous arsenic, mercury, or chromium, and no matter what EPA learns about how these materials find their way into our drinking water, EPA is forbidden to classify or regulate it as hazardous waste. EPA is forbidden to require that this toxic material be disposed of carefully.

This bill turns a blind eye to evidence of known hazards and takes us back to the Dark Ages, to a time before science was valued and before advanced knowledge transformed society. It takes us back to an era when mercury and arsenic, major components of coal ash, were used to cure toothaches and clear up your complexion. It takes us back to an era where children were sent deep into the bowels of the Earth to rip coal from the mines and to die early deaths.

The problem with continuing to push a 19th century technology like coal is that you then continue 19th century attitudes about public health and the environment. Instead of time travel through Einstein's theory of special relativity, Republicans are pushing to travel backwards in time to advance the coal industry's special interests.

While Republican efforts on time travel are unlikely to help us understand black holes, they will take us back to the era of black lung disease. Instead of allowing the coal industry and Republicans to transport our country's environmental and public health standards back to the era of Charles Dickens, we should hold these industries to great-er expectations.

In December of 2008, hundreds of acres of land were buried in toxic sludge after a Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash containment pond collapsed in Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash slurry, covering more than 300 acres of land in a gray poisonous muck, damaging homes and properties and tainting nearby rivers. The event was, quite literally, a poisonous lump of coal dumped on the nearby community just 3 days before Christmas.

This Republican bill purports to be a solution to what happened in Tennessee. It claims to create standards for coal ash containment ponds that would ensure structural integrity, but in fact it explicitly exempts those same coal ash ponds from key design requirements relating to their long-term stability.

This bill claims that States have to set up a rigorous drinking water monitoring regime and dust controls, but in fact the bill has no legal or enforceable standard for these State programs. And even more, any State at any time can waive any of these minimal permitting requirements and they don't have to tell anyone. That's right. When it comes to constructing a gigantic containment pond in your backyard, a State can choose to opt out of the requirements of this bill and no one--not the public or the EPA--would ever even know. This is just plain wrong.

We should not delegate this authority to the States and then turn around and let States hide behind a cloak of secrecy when making decisions about waste sites that may be hundreds of acres in size, receive millions of tons of waste, and which may be in operation for decades.

My amendment is very simple. It says that before a State can waive even the minimal criteria that this bill requires, that the State must first notify the public and the EPA and offer the opportunity for public comment. That is the least that we have as a responsibility to the public.

I urge an ``aye'' on the Markey amendment.

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