User:UsedCoalSalesman/sandbox/Coal Ash Regulation 101

Coal Ash Regulation 101 Environmental regulation in the United States began in earnest in the 1970s with the enactment of a series of foundational federal laws. As those regulations evolved over the ensuing decades, they affected every aspect of coal ash production and use. For instance, early provisions of the Clean Air Act required fly ash to be captured rather than allowed to disperse in power plant exhaust. Later Clean Air Act provisions aimed at reducing “acid rain” led to the widespread deployment of power plant “scrubbers” and the creation of an entirely new coal combustion product: flue gas desulfurization (FGD) gypsum. The availability of these materials led to development of beneficial uses for them, such as fly ash in concrete and FGD gypsum in wallboard. While these beneficial uses were, and continue to be, exempt from federal regulation, regulations on the management and disposal of the materials had significant impacts on beneficial use markets. Those impacts were felt in both technology and public policy arenas. As technologies were deployed at power plants to comply with requirements to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and mercury, the quality of coal combustion products changed. The coal ash beneficial use industry responded by developing and deploying a suite of “beneficiation” technologies to address the product quality changes and maintain marketability of the coal combustion products. On the policy front, issues of regulatory certainty affected the beneficial use industry’s ability to invest capital needed to build logistics systems and deploy beneficiation technologies. Following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2000 Final Regulatory Determination that coal ash would be managed as a non-hazardous waste, investments in beneficial use increased. EPA followed up in 2002 with creation of the Coal Combustion Products Partnership (C2P2), which was a cooperative effort between EPA, American Coal Ash Association, Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, U.S. Department of Energy, Federal Highway Administration, Electric Power Research Institute, and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service to promote beneficial use of CCPs as an environmentally preferable alternative to disposal. The C2P2 initiative included a challenge program, various barrier breaking activities, and development of coal combustion products utilization workshops. Results were impressive. In 2000, beneficial use volume was 32.1 million tons. Just eight years later, beneficial use volume had nearly doubled to 60.6 million tons. Then EPA abruptly terminated this successful C2P2 program after it initiated a new CCR disposal rulemaking. With regulatory certainty once again absent, the volume of CCP utilization drifted between 2009 and 2013. Even though beneficial use was exempt from the proposed disposal regulations, ash producers, specifiers, and users restricted coal ash use in light of the regulatory uncertainty and often negative publicity surrounding EPA’s activities. In 2014, EPA began signaling that the “hazardous waste” designation proposal was off the table and in 2015 finalized CCR disposal regulations under the non-hazardous section of federal law. Ash utilization began to increase again once regulatory certainty was restored. According to ACAA Production and Use Surveys, CCP utilization remained below 2008 levels for the five consecutive years of regulatory uncertainty concluding in 2013. If those five years had simply remained equal with 2008’s utilization, 26.4 million tons less coal ash would have been disposed in landfills and impoundments. Completion of the 2015 Final Rule did not completely restore regulatory certainty, however. Debate continues today over EPA’s definition of beneficial use and how material destined for beneficial use is treated in regulations.