When Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources last year began to draft tougher regulations on the disposal of coal ash, the toxic byproduct of burning coal, it faced an enormous backlash. And joining the fight against regulation was the University of Iowa, one of three Iowa universities that are among the state’s biggest producers and dumpers of the potentially dangerous waste.

The University of Iowa's power plant.

The University of Iowa's power plant in Iowa City.

The new rules would have required former quarries and mines that accept coal ash as fill in the name of reclaiming the sites to install groundwater monitoring equipment and protective lining to help ensure toxins don’t leach into the soil. Disposal-site owners and coal-ash producers were outraged, saying no evidence existed to prove that disposing of coal ash at these sites posed a risk to public health.

One of the biggest critics of the new regulations was the University of Iowa, which along with the University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University dispose of coal ash in the Basic Materials Quarry in Waterloo.

In a letter to the DNR, University of Iowa Environmental Compliance Manager Michael Valde said its costs for disposing of coal ash could increase substantially if the rules were changed, adding that no action should be taken unless there is a proven risk to public health.

“We are not aware of evidence that the current practice causes harm to human health or the environment, and the [DNR] has not cited studies or instances of such an adverse effect,” Valde said in his letter.

Environmentalists, who have been working for years to tighten Iowa’s lax dumping laws, are highly critical of this argument, pointing out that the reason no evidence of contamination in Iowa exists is because there has been no monitoring for such contamination. In other states, toxins such as arsenic, mercury and boron have leached out of unlined sites and poisoned groundwater supplies.

Even Chad Stobbe, the DNR’s lead staffer on coal ash issues, acknowledged to the Iowa Independent in March that because there is no data available, he can’t say for sure there isn’t already a problem.

However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last month released a 2002 study that had been kept secret by the Bush administration that found a heightened cancer risk for residents living near unlined landfills containing coal ash and coal refuse. The risk, the EPA found, was 500 times the level usually regarded as safe by current federal regulations.

Carrie La Seur, president and founder of Plains Justice, a Cedar Rapids-based public interest environmental law center, said now that the full danger of this type of coal ash disposal is known, the state’s regent schools should stop the dangerous dumping practice.

“I would hope and expect that as the universities and their environmental compliance staff become more aware of the EPA assessment and how there is good information on the public health danger that they will modify their position,” La Seur said. “When [Valde] wrote his letter, he could have honestly been unaware of how toxic the waste stream is. Now it is fully documented.”

Valde directed all questions to the University of Iowa Relations Office. University spokeman Steve Parrott and Director of University News Services Steve Pradarelli did not respond to multiple requests by the Iowa Independent seeking comment.

Kate Guess, director of public relations at the University of Northern Iowa, said the school adheres to the guidelines set forth by the state, and then directed all questions to the DNR.

In response to the Iowa Independent, Annette Hacker, director of News Service at Iowa State University, provided a power plant ash disposal summary prepared in January. It stated that Iowa State generates approximately 30,000 tons of coal ash per year, with 75 percent of that total going to the Waterloo quarry and the rest going to other uses such as cement manufacture, manufactured compost materials and soil stabilization applications.

The summary also states that quarry is an “alkaline environment,” which means “metals in the ash cannot chemically migrate to the groundwater.”

“Iowa State utility staff is very comfortable that the current disposal location is meeting and/or exceeding all current DNR requirements,” the summary said. “Basic Materials works well with the DNR staff and readily share information with the DNR or Iowa State. In our discussions with Basic Materials staff, they are very much in tune with the regulations and the reasons ash disposal at their site poses minimal risks to the environment.”

La Seur said the validity of the argument that the quarry is safe because it is an “alkaline environment” can be argued endlessly.

“But that argument is irrelevant and a waste of time,” she said. “There needs to be consistent standards for monitoring and building these sites regardless of where they are or the components of the coal ash that goes into them.”

Currently, the DNR has suspended its process of revisiting rules on coal-ash dumping, because the EPA has pledged to begin regulating coal ash federally. However, La Seur said there are still steps that need to be taken at the state level to ensure Iowans are protected in the meantime.

“There’s not a huge amount of debate about how we build, monitor and financially guarantee these sites in a way that protects public health and the taxpayer,” she said. “The argument has primarily been about cost. I’m hopeful we’re getting to the point where we realize that the cost associated with the contamination risk we’re creating is a whole lot more than the cost of just doing it right.”