This article was originally published by the Georgia Recorder

A push to expand community solar in Georgia is running into opposition from the state’s largest electric utility, which has been under pressure in recent years to increase rooftop solar.

Proposals filed in both chambers have sparked interest at the committee level, with those talks set to continue this week. But a key deadline for legislation to pass out of at least one chamber is quickly approaching. 

“Let’s show the rest of the world why Georgia is still the No. 1 place to do business, and we simply can’t do that without more affordable energy,” one of the sponsors, Dallas Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte, said to his colleagues.

A similar House version is getting attention, too, and is back up for discussion this week.

The House bill’s sponsor, Concord Republican Rep. Beth Camp, said large-scale solar operations are not appealing in her district, but small-scale projects like what is envisioned under the bill are.

“There are people that want to do this,” she said.  

The proposals would allow developers to participate in a community solar program under the state Public Service Commission and let them build small solar arrays on Georgia Power’s turf. Utility customers would be able to subscribe for a portion of the generation output and receive a credit on their electricity bill.

Proponents argue the program would drive down rates overall at a time when the cost of being a Georgia Power customer is on the rise while boosting clean energy access to more Georgians.

“Real community solar is an essential part of the solar-for-all puzzle in Georgia,” said Jennette Gayer, who is state director for advocacy group Environment Georgia. “So many people in Georgia miss out on solar’s benefits because they are renters or their roof is too shady.”

The Environment Georgia Research and Policy Center released a report last week that says Georgia now produces enough energy from small- and medium- sized rooftop scale solar arrays to power about 36,000 homes. But the state is running in the middle of the pack when it comes to growth of small-scale solar over the last decade.

Georgia Power has a popular “net metering” rooftop solar program that is limited to 5,000 households.

Supporters of the so-called “homegrown solar act” also cite Georgia Power’s disclosure last year that the utility expects an energy shortfall as the state continues to roll out economic development projects. The utility has proposed generating much of the power needed through fossil fuel sources.

“We’re trying to help with the energy crisis, candidly,” said Steve Butler, a spokesman for the Georgia Solar Energy Industries Association. “This is something our state could use right now and as quick as possible, but we understand that there’s going to be traditional things that we’re kind of infringing upon. And that’s really the problem. This has worked extremely well all over the country. It’s really tradition that we’re fighting here today.”

But representatives from Georgia Power countered that the proposal would shift costs to other users.

“This is a solution in search of a problem. Our renewable growth is the envy of the United States,” said Wilson Mallard, director of renewable development at Georgia Power. Mallard said the utility is “adamantly opposed to this bill.”

A representative of the Public Service Commission also says the regulatory body also has concerns and says the program is likely to cause confusion among ratepayers.

“When first discussed this bill only included nonprofits, churches and government entities, but as written it potentially includes almost 2.8 million Georgia Power customers,” said Reece McAlister, the commission’s executive director.

But Bob Sherrier, staff attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, said there would be safeguards in place to prevent costs from shifting. The Public Service Commission, which regulates Georgia Power, would set the bill credit amount for customers, as it regularly does in rate cases.

“If Georgia Power can show with evidence in a hearing in front of the commission that there is some shifting of costs between customer classes, then this permits them to impose fees for that actual cost,” Sherrier said. 

Crossover Day, when a bill must clear at least one chamber to have a smooth path to the governor’s desk, is Feb. 29. 

Republican-backed community solar bills face pushback from Georgia utility is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The following commentary was written by David Kyler. Kyler is director and co-founder of the Center for a Sustainable Coast, a nonprofit organization formed in 1997 that advocates responsible decisions to sustain coastal Georgia environment and quality of life. See our commentary guidelines for more information.

Three years ago elected officials at the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to approve the largest-ever rate increase of over $1 billion, far more than any other utility in the nation. That Georgia Power rate boost was stunning in its size, approximating the total rate increases of the country’s next 10 utilities combined. In fact, the average state rise in U.S. utility rates in 2019 was only $26 million, less than 3% of the Georgia Power increase.

Georgia PSC officials also voted to provide Georgia Power high profits, about 10% greater than the national average. These 2019 PSC approvals were shocking to many who closely follow the energy industry. Since then, every one of Georgia Power’s 2.7 million residential customers, on average, has paid $278 a year in utility fees to cover the company’s excess profits, at a time when enormous cost overruns on Plant Vogtle have been in the billions of dollars.

Why would the elected officials at a publicly funded state agency, with a mission to ensure “just and reasonable rates,” approve this lavish bailout to benefit a private-sector corporation?

By allowing Georgia Power to shield its profits by shifting costs onto customers, the PSC has enabled the company to protect stockholders from the financial consequences of failing to competently deliver the Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion as promised, on time and within budget. Burying the cost overruns in customer billing also protects the commissioners from overdue accountability for their decision to continue the project in 2017, when there was a prime opportunity to terminate it.

Five years ago Plant Vogtle was already billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, when the key contractor for the reactor units, Westinghouse, went bankrupt. By voting to continue the mismanaged project, the PSC made Plant Vogtle’s expansion the most expensive power plant ever built on earth at $34 billion — nearly two-and-a-half times the authorized cost.

However, undeserved company profits approved by the PSC in 2019 have become even more egregious since then — construction costs for Plant Vogtle have burned through $200 million per month for the past nine months, and between $100 and $150 million a month for years.

So, on June 24, 2022, Georgia Power filed a request with the PSC for a stunning $2.9 billion increase in revenues. Georgia Power is again asking for increased profit. This new rate increase, if approved along with other adjustments, is projected to increase Georgia Power bills by an additional $55-$60 a month. This hefty increase in residential electric bills will unfairly burden millions of Georgians already suffering other rising costs due to worldwide inflation.

Huge rate increases aren’t the only requests Georgia Power is asking of elected officials. To protect their own monopoly profits, they are also asking the PSC to block rooftop and community solar from taking root in Georgia. Yet, by diversifying and decentralizing power generation, rooftop solar is among the most vital tools for fighting climate change, essential to the rapid reduction in heat-trapping emissions needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.

Large-scale solar is important and Georgia is performing well in that arena. But these capital-intensive “solar farms” are profitable for Georgia Power, while rooftop solar is not. Likewise, community solar, along with rooftop solar, is one of the most important tools enabling low- and moderate-income Georgians to benefit from participating in crucial emission reductions while also limiting their ongoing electric costs. But developing this alternative threatens profit-making goals at the heart of the PSC’s obligations to Georgia Power.

Due to a series of PSC decisions, Georgia is now 40th in state rankings for rooftop solar, despite being the 14th sunniest state in the nation. And the $1 billion rate increase of 2019 made Georgia the 5th highest state in electric-bill rankings.

By stifling timely implementation of the rooftop solar sector, the PSC is ensuring that residential ratepayers will continue suffering unfair rate increases to cover the substantial capital costs of Georgia Power’s solar farms. Moreover, in doing so, the PSC will deprive Georgians of stability and resiliency benefits provided by a well-developed network of substations powered by a multitude of rooftop installations, on-site battery storage, and the clean-energy conversion that is imperative to controlling climate impacts.

It is the explicit job of elected officials at the Georgia PSC to help consumers control the cost of electricity and responsibly guide the Georgia Power monopoly, since normal competitive market forces that would otherwise do that are absent. Instead, if the PSC gives Georgia Power what it wants by approving the fees requested in the June rate proposal, rooftop solar installations will be further deterred, subverting cost controls and the means to rapidly reduce heat-trapping emissions.

On Dec. 20, Georgia’s public service commissioners have an opportunity to change directions and help the people of Georgia make the urgently needed transition to clean energy. But they will do so only if enough Georgians voice their well-founded concerns, compelling PSC members to prioritize the public interest instead of Georgia Power’s bottom line.

It must be noted that Georgia’s public service commissioners control more money than any state authority except the governor, and they shape our state’s energy future, vital to economic stability, environmental conditions, and quality of life.

Will Georgia’s power be clean and affordable? Will customers participate in key decisions about power generation or be unfairly excluded?

To properly resolve these profoundly critical issues, the PSC and other elected officials must understand that the public is paying attention and that Georgians are demanding fundamental reforms in the state’s energy policy.

Commentary: Policy reforms urgently needed for Georgia’s energy future is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a 12-part investigation by the Chicago Investigative Project in the graduate program at the Medill School at Northwestern University.

A hulking coal plant on the southern coast of Puerto Rico provides a substantial chunk of the island’s power. It burns coal that has crossed the Caribbean from a vast strip mine in Colombia.

Along with power, the plant produces 300,000 tons of toxic coal ash each year. The ash has wreaked havoc in the region, contaminating groundwater in the Puerto Rican town of Guayama, possibly contributing to cancers and other illnesses among locals.

Coal ash flooded agricultural fields during Hurricane Maria and it’s an ongoing concern in a hurricane-prone region where Hurricane Fiona is inundating the island with heavy rainfall, causing mudslides and immense damage.

The ash was also shipped to the Dominican Republic, where it was dumped and used as building material until residents of the Arroyo Barril neighborhood saw increasing cancer and plummeting birth rates, and the Dominican government banned the importation.

Through laws passed in 2017 and 2019, the Puerto Rican government essentially prohibited the storage of coal ash on the island.

So now, barges take the ash across 1,300 miles of ocean to a private port terminal in Jacksonville, Florida, and then on to a landfill in Georgia. Last year a barge spilled toxic ash into the coastal waters, and local authorities and environmentalists say that’s just a preview of the havoc the ash could cause, especially in a hurricane-prone area. They want the coal ash barred from their waterways and roads, but their hands are largely tied by lack of jurisdiction over the private port, Keystone Terminal. They have trouble even obtaining information about coal ash shipments and the environmental and health risks they might pose. 

Applied Energy Service (AES), which owns and operates the power plant, holds a contract with Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority until 2027, meaning Jacksonville will likely see coal ash coming in for at least five more years. In Guayama, AES piles about 602,000 tons of coal ash in an unenclosed staging area, exposed to Caribbean storms. Inhalation of and exposure to coal ash can cause health problems including heart and lung disease, cancer, and risks to fertility. It has been well documented that fugitive dust from coal ash piles has blown onto schools and residential areas during storms in Puerto Rico. Keystone Terminal similarly holds the coal ash in an uncontained storage site.

Since the coal ash staging area of Keystone sits near the St. Johns River, if a hurricane were to rip through Jacksonville, river pollution is almost certain, advocates and local officials say. 

“Why are we taking this toxic waste from Puerto Rico that is outlawed?” said Jacksonville Waterways Commissioner Marc Hardesty.

Futile opposition 

Coal ash from Puerto Rico has been coming through Jacksonville since at least 2016. 

When shipments arrive at Keystone Terminal in Jacksonville’s port, the ash is moved by a crane to the open-air storage pile until it is picked up by commercial trucks. In the distance, crane jibs loom above the St. Johns River, shipping containers stack tall and piles of aggregate construction materials look like mountains. When the sun hits just right, shadows stretch onto the bustling waterway. The scene conveys the industrial strength of Jacksonville — a city built upon the shoulders of its maritime infrastructure.

This industry has caused plenty of pollution over the years, but the coal ash represents a confounding threat — similar to ones faced by other towns as companies and regulators struggle to figure out how to handle almost a billion tons of coal ash stored nationwide. 

On March 22, 2021, a 418-foot barge carrying coal ash crashed into jetties at the mouth of the St. Johns River amid stormy seas. For roughly two months it stayed there while emergency response teams assessed the damage and conducted tests. Then in mid-May, after the barge’s position shifted during bad weather, hatches covering the cargo blew off, spilling an estimated 9,300 tons of coal ash into the ocean.

The Jacksonville Port Authority, or Jaxport, called for banning coal ash from moving through publicly owned ports on the St. Johns River. But it found its hands largely tied, since the authority has little jurisdiction over the private port tenants — like Keystone Terminal — that occupy the port. 

The port authority knows coal ash is being imported, but it’s hard for the authority to get information about it from AES or Keystone. Neither entity is required to submit transport manifests about what material they bring in or ship out, nor does Jaxport keep a list of commercial users of the harbor.

“The lack of knowledge of what was passing through our waters is, to me, a major problem,” said Ellen Glasser, mayor of nearby Atlantic Beach and a former FBI agent. 

After the 2021 spill, Atlantic Beach passed a resolution banning coal ash, and Hardesty proposed the Jacksonville Waterways Commission should do the same. 

It took over a year for the commission to receive an incident report from the U.S. Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the report remains confidential, so the public and even local officials still don’t know the extent of the pollution caused by the spill. 

Robert Birtalan, chair of the waterways commission’s incident review committee, was provided the unredacted report by the U.S. Coast Guard. Birtalan said during a May 26 waterways commission meeting that “every single page of that report was stamped” with a notice banning it from public release. 

“So basically, ‘Here is everything you want to know, but you can’t talk about,’” he said. 

“I found that to be nothing less than extremely concerning and certainly questionable at best,” said Hardesty.

The lack of transparency only exacerbated local officials’ and environmental leaders’ concerns about coal ash being shipped through their waterways and communities. The St. Johns River Keepers, Surfrider Foundation and Sierra Club are circulating a petition demanding the Jacksonville City Council pass an ordinance to protect the health of community waterways.

“We are seeing this relocation of pollution, putting not only our river at risk, but putting citizens at risk,” said Lisa Rinamin, the St. Johns Riverkeeper, “whether it’s for their jobs or their quality of life or health, or their food.”

A journey across the Caribbean 

The open source database MarineTraffic shows that between July 7, 2021, and Aug. 24, 2022, five tug boats — the Baltimore, Mary Ann Moran, Allie B, Helen and Marion Moran — have guided 30 barges from Guayama to Jacksonville. While the database does not specify what the barges are carrying, local environmental advocates say the Guayama port has long been used to export AES’s coal ash, and it is the only material shipped out of the port.

Collectively these barges are capable of carrying hundreds of thousands of tons of ash, and it is unknown exactly how much has been transported over the years. MarineTraffic operates as a paid subscription service — it is not cheap. Accessing up to a year’s worth of historical data can cost hundreds of dollars. 

The MarineTraffic data — collected from transponders on vessels — shows that the vast majority of vessels leaving Guayama go either to other ports in Puerto Rico, Jacksonville, or Santa Marta, Colombia. Puerto Rican investigative journalist Omar Alfonso, who has reported on the coal ash transport for years for La Perla del Sur and Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, said he’s determined that the barges are traveling empty back to Santa Marta to pick up more coal from Colombia. Coal ash cannot be stored elsewhere in Puerto Rico, so that would indicate that all the coal ash from the Guayama AES plant is headed to Florida. 

As of 2021, Keystone receives roughly a quarter of its annual revenue from importing coal ash from AES, a clear financial incentive to keep bringing in the toxic material. For 17 years the private terminal — now spanning 180 acres — has operated in the heavily industrialized section of Jacksonville known as Talleyrand. 

Pollution from the Keystone Terminal presents a risk to residents living in the Talleyrand area. The facility brings in millions of tons of bulk materials including wood chips, gypsum, limestone and coal ash each year, said Bill Harris, a representative for Keystone Properties, during a Jacksonville Waterways Commission meeting in November 2021. 

There are no enclosed facilities on Keystone’s property, and when driving past the private terminal one can see piles of aggregate material that stand hundreds of feet high, ready to be blown away by strong winds or spread by rain. 

“Any stormwater … any rainfall that hits that pad goes into a vault,” promised Harris during the 2021 waterway meeting. “There is an overflow lined pond — that if we had a 100-year storm or more — then that same water that would touch the coal ash would go to that vault and also the overflow from a lined pond.”

Keystone has not responded to requests for comment about the current status of coal ash storage or the run-off vault, nor about the safety equipment — if any — provided to employees or contractors handling the coal ash on a daily basis.

Although Keystone claims it wants to get rid of the ash as fast as possible — Harris describes the terminal as a “mere pass-through” for the material — it can remain in piles for months.

During a public waterways meeting, Keystone said it sprays imported materials with water to tamp down dust, but it is not always successful as seen in videos taken by Hardesty. This reporter saw plumes of gray dust billowing out of a clamshell crane as it transported the ash, drifting in the wind across the private terminal and into the river. 

Trucking to Georgia 

Not only is coal ash sitting in an uncovered pile on Keystone’s grounds, but the immense number of heavy trucks each day that ferry coal ash 50 miles to Georgia’s Chesser Island Road landfill expose locals to dangerous diesel emissions. 

On a balmy spring day, this reporter watched plumes of diesel exhaust spew from the trucks barreling through an industrial stretch of the city where unpruned trees shade distressed homes, boarded-up businesses, and wooden marinas weathered by time and salty Atlantic water. The trucks were dusted in a powdery film of gray particulate that accumulated in small piles on their bumpers, which at times fell off when the trucks reached rural highways. Although these vehicles are supposed to be fully covered when in transit, some were not.

Rural residents along the trucking route are concerned. In Callahan, a northern Florida town with less than 1,500 people, 60-year-old Doug Hewitt has seen firsthand the problems that these trucks and their cargo create. A former water operator for Jacksonville Electric Authority, he has lived in Callahan for nearly his entire life. 

“For about the last four years, five years, we had hundreds [of trucks] a day coming right in front of my house,” Hewitt said. “It was at least six days a week. I mean nonstop … I don’t know how the landfill’s not full.”

He said that even though the trucks are required to be covered, he’s seen partially covered ones with chunks of material flying out on the road.

“It falls out all the time all over the place,” Hewitt said.

When asked how he knew what he was looking at was coal ash, Hewitt said, “I just know … from what I’ve seen in those trucks, it all appears to be the same color, kind of a grayish color.”

How coal ash funds a small county in Georgia

For every ton of coal ash that enters Chesser Island Road Landfill, Charlton County receives compensation that goes to its annual general operating budget. In 2019, the landfill received 839,669 tons of coal ash, according to an annual report. 

According to Charlton County’s projected revenue report for 2021, the town’s total annual revenue was expected to be just over $12 million. Waste Management, the operators of Chesser Island Road Landfill, paid the county $2.8 million, about 23% of its entire general fund.

Hampton Raulerson, the Charlton County administrator, said residents are not pleased with the presence of the landfill nor the coal ash entering the county limits, but “when they realize the economic benefit that it provides to them and the county, they’re not quite as upset.” The county has 12,766 people, and the median household income is $42,743. 

The St. Mary’s River runs less than 2 miles away from the landfill, and stretches roughly 130 miles through southeastern Georgia and Northeastern Florida.

Emily Floore, the St. Mary’s Riverkeeper, is as concerned as her St. Johns River colleagues about coal ash contamination in the waterways.

“Coal ash has a lot of heavy metals that come with it, so as Riverkeeper, we just want to make sure that it’s not making it into the tributaries into the St. Mary’s River, [and] it’s not impacting the residents that are downstream of those tributaries,” Floore said. 

On a typical afternoon back on the St. Johns River, fishing lines cast off bridges into the St. Johns River, jet skiers launch off small wakes of recreational boats and children cling eagerly to inflatable tubes, waiting for open water, while tugboats navigate behemoths full of toxic material beside them. 

These activities are at risk of being suspended if a coal ash spill were to occur directly in the waterway. It could involve overlapping circumstances: another Florida hurricane, a drowsy tugboat operator, a miscalculated nautical judgment, or a combination of all three. If coal ash continues to come into Jacksonville, it is not if another spill or disaster occurs, as many see it, it is when.

“There is a reason I would assume that Puerto Rico said, ‘We don’t want it anymore,’” Hardesty said. “It’s bad stuff.”

How Puerto Rico’s banned coal ash winds up in rural Georgia is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story is part of a 12-part investigation by the Chicago Investigative Project in the graduate program at the Medill School at Northwestern University.

Plant Bowen’s cooling towers dominate the horizon east of Taylorsville Elementary School in Stilesboro, Georgia. They’re visible from 5 miles north at a boat slip in Euharlee, where paddlers push off into the Etowah River, and they form the backdrop for homes in each of the surrounding towns. 

Hard to spot, however, are the enormous ponds where Georgia Power stores the waste from the coal burned in Plant Bowen. Indeed, the plant is one of Georgia’s largest coal-fired power generation facilities and the source of the 20.4 million cubic yards of ash stored on site — enough to fill more than 6,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. 

The coal ash itself is filled with toxic chemicals like arsenic, mercury, lead, and chromium, but is not designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as hazardous waste.

Now, the power company in charge has begun cleaning up its ash ponds across the state, as federal rules require. But more than two million energy-consuming households are on the hook for the cleanup cost. 

A 2019 decision by the state’s utility regulators allowed plant owner Georgia Power to charge the first $525 million in ash pond closure costs to customers. Georgia Power, which owns nearly all the state’s coal ash sites, estimates its total coal ash closure and monitoring costs will be nearly $9 billion, a utility spokesperson said. Georgia Power analysts expect they will request an additional $1.1 billion in coal ash closure reimbursement from customers over the next three years.

Plant Bowen, an hour northwest of Atlanta, is the site of the state’s largest ash pond. Georgia’s 29 coal ash sites hold more than 92 million tons of waste, according to environmental groups’ analysis of data reported by companies.

There are over 700 coal ash repositories nationwide, many of them unlined ash ponds like Plant Bowen’s, and many of them contaminating groundwater through seepage of dangerous chemicals. Under federal rules adopted by the EPA in 2015, companies must develop closure plans for ash ponds and prevent groundwater contamination. Environmental watchdogs typically argue that ash should be removed from unlined ponds entirely and transported to lined landfills, or reused as an ingredient in concrete or other building materials. 

In January, the EPA indicated to state regulators and utility companies that it would start enforcing the 2015 rules, which thus far had sparked little government action.

On Jan. 11, EPA regulators sent a letter to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, saying the state’s ash ponds may need to be excavated.

In June, Georgia Power announced that it will excavate 9 million out of 20 million tons of stored ash at Plant Bowen for “beneficial reuse,” the largest such project in the U.S. Georgia Power now intends to excavate more of its ash than originally planned, removing ash from 20 of its 29 impoundments. 

But that excavation is expensive. Meanwhile, Georgia Power collects a 10.5% profit margin on investments the utility makes, including coal ash cleanup. The rate was approved by the state’s Public Service Commission, even though the commission staff had suggested a 9.5% return, in line with national averages for utility companies. 

Georgia Power’s situation represents one of the conundrums created by the nation’s coal ash problem: When companies do take the most protective route — reuse or removal to landfills — ratepayers sometimes pick up a massive tab. 

Problem or solution? 

Environmental advocates generally agree that beneficial reuse is a positive move, keeping ash out of landfills and reducing the need for greenhouse gas-intensive cement to make concrete. But they have mixed feelings about the Plant Bowen beneficial reuse plan, and not only because of the cost. 

Georgia Power’s new plan will keep Plant Bowen in operation past 2028, when the rest of the company’s coal-powered plants are scheduled to shut down or convert to other fuel sources. 

In a statement, Charline Whyte, senior campaign representative for Sierra Club Georgia’s Beyond Coal campaign, said, “the coal ash at Bowen can be reused regardless of whether or not the power plant itself retires, and it would be a huge mistake to view the plant as a coal ash factory when the power it produces is costing customers millions in excess costs and still pollutes air and water.”

Whyte added, “Georgia Power has millions of tons of coal ash to deal with, and it’s unlikely that the utility can use all of it in beneficial reuse projects.”

Georgia Power still plans to leave the Plant Bowen coal ash that is not reused on the site, though it will remove it from its unlined repository and place it in a new lined pit. Keeping the ash on-site worries advocates since the region is prone to sinkholes due to the porous karst geology. 

In 2002, a sinkhole opened beneath Plant Bowen’s pond, releasing 2.5 million gallons of coal ash into groundwater and the nearby Euharlee Creek. The nearby city of Rome was forced to temporarily divert its water intake to another river. 

“The very notion that we would consider approving, in a modern age, the permanent storage enclosure of this dangerous material in wetlands, right next to rivers, and frequently submerged in groundwater, is a little mind-blowing,” said Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, executive director and riverkeeper of the Coosa River Basin Initiative in Rome, Georgia. 

An environmental gamble

Coal ash contamination of groundwater has long been a concern in Georgia. In Juliette, near the state’s largest coal-fired power plant, 45 residents have signed on to a class action lawsuit demanding compensation for various illnesses, including cancers and cardiovascular disorders that they believe resulted from contaminated water. The lawsuit claims that Georgia Power illegally discharged coal ash that contaminated the groundwater, which much of the population taps through private wells. 

People who rely on private wells are particularly vulnerable to contamination, since there is no systematic water testing or treatment as there is for municipal water systems.

“Ultimately, they’re playing Russian roulette with people’s lives,” said Melissa Keefe, a resident of Rome, Georgia, and a former employee at the elementary school 2 miles from Plant Bowen. 

Prior to providing a closure permit to Georgia Power for its plans to cap Plant Bowen’s ash pond in place, Georgia environmental regulators opened a 60-day public comment period in September 2021. In a written response to hundreds of messages, including complaints that the coal ash in Plant Bowen’s ash pond could cause kidney damage and various other life-threatening illnesses, Georgia regulators replied that coal ash is not classified as a hazardous waste, and that Georgia Power’s closure plans meet regulatory requirements.

In heated debates leading up to the 2015 federal coal ash rule, environmentalists argued that coal ash should be classified as a hazardous waste demanding stricter disposal protections. But industrial users of recycled coal ash argued that such a designation would harm their ability to use coal ash in building materials, and ultimately the federal government decided not to label it as hazardous. 

Kevin Jeselnik, general counsel for the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper Association, an Atlanta-based group focusing on the health and safety of the Chattahoochee River and its tributaries, said the power company’s plans to leave the ash at some sites in place are not legal or safe. “Federal law states pretty clearly that if coal ash is going to be stored in unlined impoundments, it must be absent any free liquid,” Jeselnik said. 

Georgia Power is closing in place three ash pits at Plant McDonough-Atkinson, which sits on the Chattahoochee River just north of the Atlanta city limits and within the metropolitan area. Disclosures made by Georgia Power in the closure permitting process revealed that coal ash pits interact with local groundwater. “It’s not like they’re kind of close,” Jeselnik said. “It’s evident from the utility’s own disclosures that groundwater is in the coal ash pits.”

In response to a request for comment about the January 2022 EPA notice of intent to enforce coal ash storage rules, and the plans to cap some sites in place, Georgia Power spokesperson John Kraft said, “review of EPA’s announcement is ongoing,” and that the company will work with the state’s Environmental Protection Division to remain in compliance.

“The Company’s environmental compliance plans are based on long-standing rule interpretations held by both industry and environmental regulators and employ industry- and agency-accepted engineering practices utilized for closure designs that are consistent with the solid waste regulatory requirements on which the CCR [coal combustion residuals] rule is based,” said Kraft, by email. 

The future of Georgia coal ash 

In 2019, Georgia Power officials convinced the Georgia Public Service Commission that the state regulatory body had no say over the method and long-term safety of coal ash cleanup. Only the size and distribution of the cost recovery was within the commission’s rightful scope, the company successfully argued. Environmental concerns, according to testimony by Mark Berry, Georgia Power’s chief of environmental compliance, were up to other agencies to adjudicate.

On July 14, the state Supreme Court denied a petition from the Sierra Club to review the costs of coal ash cleanup passed on to ratepayers in the 2019 rate case. 

Georgia Power is compelled by state law to explain to the Public Service Commission every three years where it plans to source its energy from and how it plans to charge its customers. In a rate case filed in July, Georgia Power asked for a second round of cleanup payments to be billed to its customers. The Public Service Commission ultimately did not approve that request. 

“Commissioners should be concerned that ratepayers are being forced to pay for coal ash clean-up that will not get the job done and could mean billions of dollars of cost overruns when groundwater contamination continues,” said Jennette Gayer, director of the advocacy and conservation group Environment Georgia, in an emailed statement before the commission made its decision.

Dori Jaffe, a managing attorney for the Sierra Club, noted that the fate of Georgia’s coal ash ponds, and consequently the prices that consumers will pay in the future, will be determined in part by how the EPA handles several canary-in-the-coal-mine cases in other states.

Plant Gavin, owned by Lightstone Generation in Cheshire, Ohio, is currently one of a dozen coal ash sites whose closure plans the EPA is reviewing. The plant is the seventh largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the United States, and its former owner, AEP Ohio, decided to purchase the entire nearby town of Cheshire in 2002, in order to avoid expensive litigation over violations of the Clean Air Act.

“My best guess would be that we have to wait until a final decision comes out of EPA” on Plant Gavin, Jaffe said. “And at that point, that’s probably when we will start to see some movement” from Georgia Power or state regulators on sites within Georgia, as Georgia regulators may look to precedent in other states to inform their decisions.

In an April 22 filing with the Public Service Commission, Georgia Power offered to excavate over 14 million cubic yards of coal ash at Plant Wansley, its third largest impoundment. 

“I suspect they are getting nervous about leaving coal ash sitting in groundwater,” Jaffe said in an email, “and are maybe recognizing that their current plans to cap-in-place won’t get approval anymore.”

Kraft said the decision to switch to removal was made “to maximize the use of the existing landfill asset and provide for future beneficial use of the ash as driven by the market.”

The Chattahoochee Riverkeeper Association maintains that coal ash should be excavated and moved into landfills further from rivers, but not necessarily off the premises of the power plants. Jeselnik, the organization’s general counsel, hopes that the excavation at Plant Wansley might serve as a model for the other unlined ash ponds along the Chattahoochee River, including Plant Yates and Plant McDonough-Atkinson. 

A heavy burden

Georgia isn’t the only place where coal ash cleanup costs have ballooned, and ratepayers have paid. In North Carolina, a legal settlement is forcing Duke Energy to excavate ash at all its plants. When Duke was planning to close some of its ash ponds in place, it said the cost would not exceed $5.6 billion. Now that it needs to excavate all the ash, the company says that the cost could rise to $9 billion. In another settlement earlier this year, Duke agreed to lower the figure it would seek to charge customers for its coal ash cleanup in North Carolina.

Some environmental advocates and lawyers have argued that utilities inflate their predicted cleanup costs, perhaps to convince regulators to allow them to leave ash in place or do less thorough cleanups.

Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Utility Dive in 2019 that “utilities, when they’re fighting against having to clean up sites, greatly overstate the cost of excavating.” Duke Energy in particular, Holleman said, “has routinely exaggerated estimates of cost.”

Costs are especially hard to predict in Georgia because the Public Service Commission has granted Georgia Power’s requests to keep site-by-site estimates and line-item costs hidden, arguing it is a “trade secret.” Filings going back to 2015 on Georgia Power construction projects indicate that the commissioners ignored their own agency staff, who advised against allowing Georgia Power to hide cost calculations from the public. 

Kraft said that the company does not disclose projected costs on a specific basis in order to protect its customers’ interests. “Release of projected budgetary estimates could impact contract terms and inflate bid pricing, harming the company’s ability to provide the most cost-effective solution,” Kraft said.

Both Demonbreun-Chapman and Jeselnik, of the Coosa River Basin Initiative and the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper Association respectively, told Energy News Network that their organizations have not felt Georgia Power is transparent or working with ratepayers’ best interests in mind. 

“When you’ve got a corporation that’s there to maximize profits for shareholders, the calculus is compliance, not the common sense of what to do with this waste stream,” Demonbreun-Chapman said. “We’ve tried to have conversations in good faith, but our difference of opinion is pretty vast.”

So far, Georgia Power has charged its customers for cleanup costs through monthly bills that include a line item for “Environmental Compliance Cost Recovery.” Since April 2020, that charge has been equivalent to just over 18% of customers’ bills, according to a public filing with the commission. Commission spokesperson Tom Krause indicated in an email statement that approximately one-sixth of the environmental compliance charge was for coal ash cleanup, but did not respond to a request for a more specific figure.

In addition to the charge for coal ash cleanup, ratepayers also are being billed for the construction of a new 28-megawatt nuclear power plant in eastern Georgia. Georgia Power has recently indicated that the total cost of construction will approach $30 billion, twice the original sum approved by the Public Service Commission. This translates to an additional 11% tacked on to customers’ bills.

In its integrated resource plan approved in July, Georgia Power indicated that changes to its energy grid, including an additional emphasis on solar power generation and storage, will raise the typical monthly electricity bill by $14. The commission is scheduled to vote on all rate-related matters at the conclusion of this year’s rate case in December, and the resulting rates will be in force for the next three years. 

Georgia’s utility bills were the fifth highest in the United States as of 2019, when the rate case regarding coal ash costs was being debated. As of February 2022, Georgia had the eighth most expensive electricity in the nation, and was fourth for overall energy costs when factoring in natural gas and home heating oil. Alabama and Mississippi are also in the top 10 for energy costs, and customers in those states get their power from utilities owned by the parent company of Georgia Power — a conglomerate called Southern Company. 

Households in these states also have the highest average energy burdens in the country, meaning they spend the greatest proportion of their incomes on electricity. 

Given this context, advocates and ratepayers stew over what many see as the twin injustices posed by unsafe cleanup and cost recovery. 

“I think it’s on them to clean it up,” said Keefe, the former teacher. “And meanwhile the cost keeps going up.”

In Georgia, ratepayers face a big bill for coal ash cleanup, while a utility profits is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

President Joe Biden moved to remove hurdles to offshore wind development in the southern Atlantic on Wednesday, saying it was among many executive actions he was taking to combat the climate crisis.

“We’re going to make sure the ocean is open for the clean energy of our future,” said Biden, speaking at a site poised to become the first offshore wind manufacturing hub in Massachusetts, “and [do] everything we can do to give a green light to wind power on the Atlantic coast.” 

But it wasn’t clear how Biden’s directive to the Secretary of the Interior to “advance clean energy development” in the federal waters of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas would evade a Trump-era ban on offshore wind in the region, and most clean energy advocates said Congress still needs to step in. 

“Responsible offshore wind power is key to protecting climate-vulnerable birds and communities. The administration’s plan is a welcome boost for the industry,” said Greg Andeck, director of strategy and government relations for Audubon North Carolina. “Ultimately, we’ll also need Congressional action to permanently remove the ban on new offshore wind development.” 

The stakes are especially high in North Carolina, where offshore wind’s potential to cut climate pollution and create jobs is vast but little realized, with just two projects under development. One, called Wilmington East, was leased days before the 10-year ban took effect on July 1.  

Issued in the late stages of the 2020 election campaign, the moratorium on offshore lease sales was aimed at oil and gas — an effort to win over voters in states like Florida and North Carolina that largely oppose drilling. Though it wasn’t specified in the order, the Trump administration later confirmed it included wind. 

Early in Biden’s presidency, advocates and wind proponents in Congress settled on legislation, rather than a new executive order, to reverse the Trump move. A law would be more permanent, the reasoning went, and it wasn’t clear a presidential act would stand up to court challenges: A federal judge ruled in 2019 that Trump couldn’t simply reverse an Obama drilling ban with a pen stroke. 

“The only sure-fire way to avoid intensive litigation is to pass legislation,” said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition. 

Joined by her Republican colleague Rep. David Rouzer of Wilmington, Rep. Deborah Ross, a Raleigh Democrat, has pushed repeatedly to lift the moratorium in Congress, introducing a stand-alone bill and adding language to three different House-passed bills: the Build Back Better bill, now almost certainly dead; the COMPETES act, designed to help the United States compete with China; and just last week, the National Defense Authorization Act. 

All now sit in the Senate, but advocates consider the latter their best hope for passage. While Kollins welcomed the Biden announcement, she stressed: “I hope what it does is bring attention to the need for legislation, and that we can continue to get enough Republicans on board that [the language] stays in the NDAA.” 

The National Ocean Industries Association, formerly an offshore oil and gas trade group that now also promotes offshore wind, agreed. “The most durable, and perhaps only, fix will be through legislation,” said Justin Williams, the group’s vice president for communications. 

Even from advocates with the rosiest takes on the Biden announcement, there’s little argument that laws are preferable to executive orders.  

“Congressional action is always better,” said Athan Manuel, the D.C.-based director of the Sierra Club’s Lands Protection program. “It’d be great if Richard Burr, who is retiring, would say, ‘I want to leave a legacy for my state, and do more on offshore wind,’” Manuel said of the senior senator from North Carolina. “We need Republicans like him.” 

But some wondered if the White House had devised a legal pathway for getting around the Trump moratorium, and if Wednesday’s announcement was the first step in a textbook process for taking public comment or establishing regulations. 

Biden didn’t call the Trump action a ban or make mention of lifting it, instead saying that his “predecessor’s actions had only caused confusion” for the Southeast. The deliberate wording could be part of the strategy.  

“The way Trump did it was so sloppy,” said Manuel. About whether the former president properly invoked his authority to ban offshore wind, he said, “there’s still a lot of back and forth.” 

No matter what, said Sam Salustro, vice president of policy at the Business Network for Offshore Wind, the Biden announcement sends an important message to his industry. “It’s continuing to show to the international market, and the supply chain, and developers, that offshore wind will exist in the entire U.S. coastline area,” he said. “That’s a very strong market signal to send to the world.” 

In an emailed statement, Rep. Ross praised Biden while vowing to continue to push to lift the moratorium in Congress. 

“I applaud President Biden for outlining a bold plan to combat the climate crisis, including actions to boost the offshore wind energy industry in my home state. We can use the same wind that powered the Wright Brothers’ flight more than 100 years ago to power homes, create jobs, and help save our planet,” Ross said. “I will keep up my work here in Congress to support the offshore wind industry, but we cannot afford to wait.”

Biden’s offshore wind directive doesn’t end industry’s uncertainty in Southeast is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.