I don't recall who said it but the quote was that one should never engage in a war of words with an outfit that buys ink by the barrel.
We need to respond to this very carefully, as the DP is probably correct. The water in the Cheat River would dilute the discharge from the ash impoundments to the point where the contaminants would be hard to detect. So we need to state precisely what the concerns are.
Or as another favorite author says, "Nothing is so futile as knowing the answer to the wrong question." The Clean Water Act makes it clear that the "Solution to Pollution is NOT Dilution", so testing Cheat River water after the contaminants have been diluted is inappropriate and does not meet the legal standards. That is why DEP does not require monitoring in the Cheat River, they require monitoring at the outfall. That is where the standard has to be met.
Thus, the DP's sampling procedure addresses the wrong question and confuses the issue with the wrong measurements. It is fortunate that Mon Power's technical staff are not so incompetent as to use the methodology used by the Dominion Post, or they would lose this case in a slam dunk.
The key issue for the public is that there is no "threshold" for carcinogens like arsenic. Even undetectable amounts will increase the health risk. That is why taking the measurements at the outfall, not in the Cheat River, is essential to answering the right questions.
The DP used this same approach a couple years ago when a local resident claimed that MUB was polluting the stream in a local City Park with E. coli. The DP collected water samples and sold a lot of papers with these front page stories, even though no technical expert claimed that these were valid samples.
But as they say in Hollywood "There is no such thing as bad publicity". We should look at this as an opportunity to put together a response to better inform the public about the real risks from Albright. If we had thought there was a imminent danger of adverse health impacts from Albright, we would not have issued a 60-day notice, we would have petitioned for an immediate injunction. The issue is not the imminent health risk, but the long-term pollution from incremental amounts of arsenic.
JBK
Jim Sconyers jim_scon@yahoo.com 3/14/2011 9:53 AM >>>
I hadn't seen it - thanks Cindy.
Frankly I find this shocking - that a right-wing newspaper would set itself up to refute - in their view at least - the science behind the charges. And it's bizarre that they want to dispute the company's own reported discharges.
All the more reason to be glad this is moving ahead to litigation.
Jim Sconyers jim_scon@yahoo.com 304.698.9628
Remember: Mother Nature bats last.
________________________________ From: Cindy Rank clrank@hughes.net To: mbecher@appalachian-center.org; jlovett@appalachian-center.org; derek_teaney@yahoo.com; mjanes@hardynet.com Cc: sminney@wvrivers.org; jkotcon@wvu.edu; jim_scon@yahoo.com; hugh.rogers@gmail.com Sent: Mon, March 14, 2011 9:24:11 AM Subject: DP article re: Albright
In case you haven't seen this article:
Local page 9-A DOMINION POST Monday 14 March 2011: UPDATE
Test: Water meets standards
Groups say Mon Power is polluting
BY MICHELLE WOLFORD The Dominion Post
KINGWOOD — Three environmental groups have threatened to file suit against Mon Power over arsenic levels from coal ash dumps near the Albright Power Plant, which the company owns.
The groups — West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, W.Va. Rivers Coalition and Sierra Club of West Virginia — claimed in a letter sent to the company in February that those levels are “unlawfully high” in the Cheat River.
The groups also claim the company is not reporting selenium discharge with enough accuracy to determine if it violates its DEP permit.
On Feb. 22, The Dominion Post collected water samples from the Cheat about one mile upstream from the Albright Power Plant, and a quarter of a mile downstream from the plant. The samples were tested for arsenic and selenium by Reliance Laboratories Inc. of Bridgeport. Results received this week show that the water in the Cheat River meets Water Quality Standards.
Neither sample revealed either mineral at a level above the permit restrictions.
The samples were not obtained on Mon Power property nor at the same sites where the company checked its discharge. But they were collected before drainage from the coal ash dumps enters the river and after.
Numbers provided by the groups, which the state DEP has confirmed are Mon Power’s (then known as Allegheny Power) readings at the Albright plant, indicate the company did exceed its discharge limit for arsenic from July to December of 2010.
“Each discharge amount that exceeds permit limits is an unlawful and unpermitted discharge, and therefore, is not shielded from liability” under the Clean Water Act, the groups told the company in a letter, which threatens a lawsuit seeking civil penalties and “for an injunction compelling it to come into compliance with the Act and its permit requirements if no remediation steps are outlined.”
According to Kathy Cosco, a spokeswoman for the West Virginia DEP, exceeding permit limits “does not always trigger notices of violation or penalties.”
If the DEP notices a pattern of “exceedences,” she said, “the DEP will work with the company to determine what the problem is. If the company can’t get them in line, or if they fail to take steps necessary to rectify the situation, then the agency will start down the path of assessing penalties.
“There are instances where the nature or severity of a single violation may result in the assessment of a penalty,” Cosco said. “Generally speaking, however, an individual exceedance reported on a Discharge Monitoring Report would not trigger an enforcement action. The company is expected to take necessary measures to achieve compliance with the permit.”
The environmental groups also claim Allegheny Power isn’t accurately reporting selenium discharges into the Cheat River.
“From March 2010 through October 2010, Allegheny Energy reported the concentration of selenium in its effluent with only three significant digits — too few for the undersigned, the DEP, or the public to determine whether a violation had occurred.”
According to Cosco, “the company has what is a called a variance: A condition that allows the facility a threeyear period during which it may exceed its selenium limits three times before a violation is triggered.” In other words, if the company exceeds the 0.005 mg/l (milligrams per liter) four times in a 36-month period then the exceedence is considered a violation. When the
legislature passed this variance, it applied to monitoring that began Jan. 25, 2010, so the permit just completed the first year of the threeyear period.
In the letter to Allegheny Energy, the three groups claim Allegheny Energy “has met and possibly exceeded its limit of 0.005 mg/L on at least five separate occasions. ... Because Allegheny Energy is apparently rounding to the nearest part per billion (equivalent to a thousandth of a mg/L), a reported 0.005 mg/L could reflect a discharge with a selenium concentration from 4.51 parts per billion to 5.49 parts per billion.”
Testing done on behalf of The Dominion Post showed the selenium level at less than 0.004 mg/L upstreamm and downstream from the plant, which is in compliance with its permit limit.
The letter asserts that by rounding off the numbers, the company “has the potential to hide violations of its permits, and is therefore not in accordance with the monitoring and reporting requirements of the Clean Water Act.”
“Our concern is that the standards set by DEP to protect human health and the environment are not being met,” said Mike Becher of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, who represents three nonprofits. “An additional consideration is that just downstream of this discharge is a trout stream —- Daugherty Run,” he said.
Becher said the technology exists to treat pollutants, such as arsenic. “The best result from our perspective is to achieve compliance with the legal limits in the permit.”
David Neurohr, an Allegheny Energy spokesman, said the company had no comment “until we can see something a little more definite.” He said he had not seen the letter sent to Daniel C. McIntire, Allegheny’s vice president of Generation Operations.