NRG files for ash pile containment permit

Indian River power plant owner NRG Energy wants to stabilize the shoreline along a massive pile of coal ash on Burton Island. It’s part of an ongoing project to harden the entire shoreline, which environmental officials found to be eroding in 2005.

Environmentalists argue stabilizing the Burton Island shoreline won’t stop contaminants from leaching into water around the old ash landfill, or protect the island from sea-level rise and storms.

NRG Energy spokesman David Gaier said the company wants to stabilize the entire shoreline of Burton Island by 2011. Pending approval from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), Gaier said NRG Energy will begin work in the autumn of 2011.

NRG Energy has been working with DNREC on a voluntary cleanup plan since a department employee noticed erosion along the Burton Island landfill in 2005.

NRG Energy applied for a permit to stabilize an additional 4,900 feet of shoreline along Indian River and Island Creek with riprap and rocks. The company also wants to create 11,000 square feet of tidal wetlands along the east end of Burton Island, according to a legal notice from DNREC.

No date has yet been set for a public hearing on the permit application, DNREC spokeswoman Joanna Wilson said.

The latest phase will cost $2.3 million, Gaier said. The first phase of the stabilization, completed in 2009, cost $4 million, he said.

Rehoboth Beach resident and retired Environmental Protection Agency scientist John Austin said he’s not opposed to shoreline hardening, but it’s not enough to address dangers from a coal ash pile in the Inland Bays.

“This is a Band-Aid,” said Austin. “It’s an island. We have sea-level rise and ever-increasing tidal heights.” During last November’s nor-easter, riprap along Burton Island, part of an earlier phase of the same shoreline-hardening project, was underwater, he said.

Austin says that nothing in the shoreline-hardening plan will stop selenium, arsenic and other contaminants from leaching into groundwater or the bays themselves.

Austin said DNREC documents on test wells on and around Burton Island show arsenic and selenium levels far exceed federal safety standards. DNREC scientists have said the sides of a test well appeared to be eroding, giving higher readings of heavy metals. In previous public meetings, DNREC scientists have said health risks from heavy metals under Burton Island are low.

He said many environmentalists and area residents have asked DNREC to direct NRG Energy to remove the coal ash. That’s an expensive proposal, Austin says. So is a slurry wall, a 100-foot deep wall of impermeable clay, which Austin says is a common way to contain contaminated groundwater. Groundwater under the ash pile would have to be pumped out and treated in order to keep pressure equal on both sides of the wall, he said.

Burton Island covers 144 acres. Delmarva Power and Light used it to dispose of coal ash from 1957 to 1980, over which time a mound of ash 15 feet high was built over tidal marshes and wetlands. Austin said he calculates there are 4 million tons of coal ash on the island.