Historical Applications of Coal Ash as Structural Fill: U.S. EPA Office of Inspector General Report

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) Office of Inspector of General (“OIG”) issued a March 8th report addressing coal ash titled:

EPA Finalized a Study of the Historical Applications of Coal Ash as Structural Fill (“Report”)

See Report No. 19-N-0084.

Coal Ash (also referred to as coal combustion residue) is typically created when coal is combusted by power plants to produce electricity.

OIG states that it had undertaken the Report because it received a Hotline complaint about the status of EPA’s corrective action in response to OIG Report No. 11-P-0173. OIG states that it conducted the work to determine whether the corrective actions were completed.

The prior report is stated to have contained two recommendations for EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management:

1. Define and implement risk evaluation practices to determine the safety of the coal combustion residual beneficial uses EPA promotes.

2. Determine if further EPA action is warranted to address historical coal combustion residual structural fill applications, based on comments on the proposed rule and other information available to EPA.

OIG determined that the EPA Office of Land and Emergency Management completed the corrective actions associated with the previously referenced recommendations. OIG states that it was informed that EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery developed an unpublished document titled:

Information Assessment of Historical Structural Fill Applications (May 27, 2016)

This document is stated to have detailed efforts by that office to address the second recommendation.

OIG recommends that EPA’s Assistant Administrator for Land and Emergency Management publish the previously referenced document. EPA is stated to have agreed and completed the corrective action by publishing the document in the RCRA Online internet database.

A copy of the OIG Report can be found here.