Lawsuit Launched to Clean Up Toxic Coal Ash in Pennsylvania
The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue Talen Energy Corporation and Brunner Island, LLC, for failing to mitigate toxic pollution risks from a coal ash storage pond in York Haven, Pennsylvania.
Today’s notice charges that Brunner Island Steam Electric Station failed to comply with a 2015 Environmental Protection Agency regulation requiring groundwater monitoring and other protective measures to prevent pollution discharges and catastrophic failures of improperly constructed or managed coal ash ponds.
“It shouldn’t take a lawsuit to force these polluters to make sure their toxic waste doesn’t foul waterways and groundwater and harm people and wildlife,” said Ragan Whitlock, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These dangerous pollutants are the true legacy of the multitrillion-dollar coal industry.”
Brunner Island is a 1,490-megawatt coal- and gas-fired power plant on the Susquehanna River that generates and stores large amounts of coal-combustion residual wastes, including fly ash and bottom ash, in in-ground impoundments. These coal ash wastes — which are a toxic slurry left over after coal is burned — contain a host of heavy metals and contaminants, including cadmium, chromium, lead, radium and arsenic, that can pollute waterways and poison wildlife and people.
Brunner Island’s violations are especially concerning because the coal ash pond at issue, Ash Basin 5, is filled with toxic coal ash slurry at depths of up to 40 feet, 15 feet of which are sitting below the groundwater line.
According to the company’s public reports for this pond, in the first quarter of 2024 alone, high levels of contamination from several pollutants, including lithium, aluminum, arsenic, molybdenum and manganese, were found in the groundwater in several downgradient monitoring wells.
“Federal and state environmental agencies have failed to enforce the law at this site,” said Jim Hecker, senior attorney of Public Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Project. “We are therefore invoking the available citizen suit authority to compel Brunner Island’s compliance with the federal regulations.”
Coal-fired, steam electric power plants are the largest industrial source of toxic water pollution in the United States, releasing heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium.
Arsenic exposure, for example, can lead to nervous system damage, cardiovascular harm and a number of cancers in humans. It can also cause acute and chronic harm to aquatic species, including federally endangered shortnose and Atlantic sturgeon.
As today’s notice details, the Brunner Island facility has not conducted any of the inspection, groundwater monitoring or corrective action steps for its impoundments that are required by EPA regulations. Specifically, Brunner has not developed the required groundwater sampling and analysis program or evaluated groundwater monitoring data for statistically significant increases of pollutants over background levels.
The Center for Biological Diversity is represented by Public Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Project, Steve Harvey Law, LLC, and in-house counsel.
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The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Public Justice combines high-impact litigation, strategic partnerships, and grassroots organizing with targeted communications to shape the narrative about environmental injustice and build empowering relationships with communities most affected by environmental threats and actions. The Public Justice Environmental Enforcement Project holds polluters accountable by enforcing environmental laws and winning groundbreaking results in court to protect our nation’s clean water, air, and land—and the people, animals, and ecological communities that rely upon it. For more information, visit PublicJustice.net.
