In the formulation and implementation of policy, words matter. This is particularly true of environmental policy. How the government regulates environmental issues depends largely on how the components of the policy have been classified. Presently, this is playing out in the Georgia Legislature where House Bill 756 is being considered.
Introduced in mid-January, HB 756 attempts to reclassify coal ash – the solid byproduct of burning coal for electricity. Though coal ash contains heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, and mercury, it is not classified as hazardous waste by the EPA. There is no regulation requiring coal ash ponds to be lined in order to prevent contact with groundwater.
Compare this with regulations surrounding household trash. Trash from our homes must be disposed of in municipal solid waste landfills that are required to have not only liners, but also collection systems to avoid slurry contamination into water systems. Our household trash is more stringently handled, from an environmental protection perspective, than the heavy metals in coal ash.
Georgia is a top coal-ash generating state with 11 coal plants producing more than 6 million tons of ash annually. HB 756 came about in response to Georgia Power’s current coal ash pond closure wave. Twenty-nine ponds are in the process of closing in response to a 2015 Federal rule requiring ash ponds and landfills to be excavated or closed in place. Rather than excavating all of the unlined ponds and transferring them to lined ponds, present plans are in place to excavate 19 and close 10 in place. By putting coal ash in the same category as household garbage, the bill ensures that liners and collection systems will be required.
The coal ash case is an excellent demonstration of a core environmental and public health policy challenge: risk analysis. While it seems odd, at best, that we would control the storage and disposal of household trash more stringently that the heavy metals found in coal ash, a few innate characteristics of risk assessment make environmental policy development difficult.
Acceptable levels of pollution (and the associated risks to human health) are a cornerstone of the environmental policy-making process. In the policy arena, tradeoffs between different interests are constantly being weighed and debated, and human health happens to be one of those interests. Even carcinogenic exposure is not banned though no safe threshold of exposure can be determined. Thus, we tend to rely upon risk analysis to determine acceptability. Unfortunately, the result is that we focus our attention on “acceptable” levels of risk rather than alternatives to that risk.
Now, in the case of the existing coal ash ponds, it’s too late to find an alternative. The byproduct exists in ponds already and must be disposed of, heavy metals and all. However, it certainly raises the question as to whether the byproduct of burning coal, also called an externality of the process, is worth it. Is the increased cost to human and environmental health worth the benefit of the relatively cheap energy? I think your response to that question largely depends on how coal impacts you, whether directly or indirectly. If you are living next to Plant Scherer in Juliette, just north of Macon, that “acceptable” level of risk may be decidedly unacceptable.
Dr. Heather Farley is a professor of Public Management in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia. She is an associate of the College’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
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