Tennessee governor wants more coal ash used in road building

Use of more coal ash in road beds would help avoid spills such as the recent spill at a TVA power plant.

The Associated Press

1/30/2009

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Gov. Phil Bredesen wants the Tennessee Valley Authority to quit storing so much coal ash in ponds, and he has directed state transportation officials to explore ways to recycle more of the waste into road beds.

The Democratic governor said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that recycling would help avoid conditions that led to last month's massive coal ash spill at a TVA power plant.

The spill sent more than 1 billion gallons of ash and sludge into a rural neighborhood surrounding the TVA plant in Kingston, about 40 miles west of Knoxville.

Bredesen said the spill has highlighted the need for policies to encourage better disposal of the coal ash produced by the nation's largest public utility.

“We're not just going to let you build big piles of it outside your plant anymore, or big ponds full of ash sludge,” he said.

Transportation Department spokeswoman Julie Oaks said tests at the Kingston spill site showed that the coal ash there does not meet standards for road building because its water content is too high. TDOT currently uses dry ash from another TVA facility in Cumberland City to make concrete, she said.

Bredesen said TVA may have to reconsider which kind of coal it buys for the plant — and how it burns it — to maximize its recycling ability.

Six of TVA's coal-fired power plants use wet-ash disposal, including Kingston. The agency is considering converting Kingston to a dry-ash system that wouldn't require retention ponds.

John Noel, president of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, praised Bredesen for trying to find a better way to dispose of coal ash. But Noel said careful study is needed to ensure using the ash in road building would be safe.

“If you put any substance with toxicity in it on a roadway, the question for me is could this stuff become airborne as the road wears?” Noel said. “Assuming that the substance can be locked in, then lets figure out how to do it.”

Bredesen said mixing chemically treated coal ash into road beds would minimize the concentration of heavy metals or other harmful substances.

“It's very well stabilized and also because it's very well distributed, you don't have a billion gallons in one place,” he said. “It's spread around.”

While the TVA oversight is mostly in the hands of Congress, the state has some regulatory authority that could help spur efforts to reuse coal ash, Bredesen said.

“I can imagine if through regulation you made the cost of doing this stuff more reflective of taking care of it, that helps push you in that direction of taking further steps toward recycling,” he said.

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