Analysis - The Institute for Southern Studies

form a coherent organization and they must have enough funding to launch and maintain a lawsuit. On the other side of such litigation,
households usually face a single firm often with greater legal funding resources. This imbalance suggests that external costs of leachate
contamination from industrial waste disposal sites (such as CCR landfills and impoundments) may not be recuperated.
The CCR proposed rule also addresses a second source of market failure – inadequate or asymmetric information. Citizens residing near CCR
disposal sites may be unaware of exposure to chemical contaminants contained in CCR leaching from disposal units. Thus, while nearby
citizens may have the right to legal lawsuits to recuperate health and property damages, citizens may not be aware of the need to do so until
health risks (and health costs) have already been incurred.
A very recent example of negative externalities associated with structural failures is the ecological and socio-economic damages and costs
associated with a large environmental disaster involving the collapse of a CCR impoundment in 2008. On 22 December 2008, over a billion
gallons (i.e., 5.4 million cubic yards) of CCR was unintentional environmental released over 300 acres from the collapse of a Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA) coal-fired electric utility surface impoundment in Kingston TN. This event caused significant damage to 40 homes, the
Emory River, a nearby recreational lake, community roadways, a gas pipeline, and a railroad. As indicated in Exhibit 5B-2 of this RIA, the
estimated cleanup costs to the TVA --- not including social costs of ecological damages and community socio-economic damages --- are
estimated at $933 million to $1.2 billion. This event attracted major citizen, national press, and Congressional interest in the subject of CCR
management and the urgent need for prevention of such future environmental and community damages. In the wake of this disaster, during her
14 January 2009 Senate confirmation hearing, EPA Administrator-designate Lisa P. Jackson, testified 11 :
“I think that you’ve put your finger on a very important thing that EPA must do right away, which is to assess the hundreds
of other sites that are out there. Many of them … are … up hill from schools or from areas where just the physical hazard
of having this mountain of wet coal ash, if there’s a break, can endanger lives immediately. So I would think that EPA needs
to first and foremost assess the current state of what’s out here and where there might be another horrible accident waiting
to happen … EPA currently has and has in the past, assessed its regulatory options with respect to coal ash, and I think it’s
time to re-ask those questions and re-look at the state of regulation of them from an EPA perspective.”
According to a 23 January 2009 news report, 12 there was growing Congressional interest for either the EPA with its existing RCRA regulatory
authorities, or the Congress with potential new legislation, to regulate CCR disposal units:
“Several lawmakers have introduced, or announced plans to introduce, competing legislation to regulate CCR. For example,
Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said she would introduce legislation
compelling EPA to regulate CCR in the event the Obama EPA fails to act soon. "If we are not satisfied with action we may
move legislatively," Boxer told EPA Administrator-designate Lisa Jackson at a January 14 [2009] confirmation hearing. "I
don't want to get to that point because I think you have the authority to regulate this. It needs to be done."”
11 Lisa Jackson’s 14 January 2009 Senate confirmation hearing testimony and webcast is available from the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works’
website at: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Hearing&Hearing_ID=ae2c3342-802a-23ad-4788-d1962403eb76
12 Source: Waste Business Journal, “EPA Vows to Act on Coal Waste,” 23 January 2009, http://www.wastebusinessjournal.com/news/wbj20090127B.htm
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