U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are seeking public input on a proposal to close a regulatory loophole that conservationists claim utilities are exploiting to avoid cleaning up toxic coal ash from retired power plants.

Georgia Power plans to dispose of toxic waste at a number of coal plants around the state using a method that the EPA recently clarified is banned by federal rules and risks contaminating drinking water.

A recent order by the EPA telling an Ohio power plant it could no longer dispose of toxic coal ash in an unlined pond, thereby polluting groundwater, could have important implications for four Georgia Power sites.

On the Thursday Dec. 1 edition of the Georgia Today podcast: Georgia leads the country in new AIDS infections, Herschel Walker visits North Georgia, and Delta is hiring thousands 

State regulators are set to vote next week on Georgia Power’s long-term plan that environmental and clean energy advocates say falls short of renewable energy goals and of responsibly closing coal-fired power plants.

The Georgia Public Service Commission is set to vote July 22 on Georgia Power’s long-term energy plans for coal plant closings, solar energy production, electric vehicle infrastructure and more.

When it closes, Plant Scherer will leave behind about 16 million tons of toxic coal ash, which is the waste generated when coal is burned to produce energy. The plant is one of four Georgia Power sites where coal ash is poised to be left in unlined pits where it is in contact with groundwater.

Four coal ash ponds Georgia Power plans to close in place will continue to expose ash to groundwater after the closures are completed, an executive with the utility disclosed this week.

Georgia’s top environmental regulator says his agency is adjusting to what he called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “new interpretation” of an Obama-era coal ash disposal rule.

For the past several years, Georgia Power has gone to great lengths to skirt the federal rule requiring coal-fired power plants to safely dispose of massive amounts of toxic waste they produced.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is taking a stronger role in keeping coal ash, the toxic material left over from burning coal to make electricity, away from groundwater. 

Georgia environmental advocates have released their annual list of water issues they say need to be addressed — their so-called Dirty Dozen. 

Georgia Power plans to excavate and remove the ash from 19 ponds and close the other 10 ponds in place. Lawyers for the Sierra Club have argued the PSC failed to take into account Georgia Power’s culpability in creating the coal ash problem to begin with, and thus should not be allowed to pass all of those costs onto customers. 

Here in Georgia, the state Environmental Protection Division has issued the first proposed permit allowing Georgia Power to press forward with plans to leave more than 1 million tons of coal ash in an unlined pit at Floyd County’s Plant Hammond near the Coosa River.

Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division appears poised to approve a storage plan that would allow the toxic material left over from burning coal to generate electricity, so-called coal ash, to remain potentially in the path of an underground aquifer feeding the Coosa River in Northwest Georgia.