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Sep 26, 2018

Federal Appellate Court Rules That Coal Ash Ponds Not Subject to CWA

Clean Water Act: Coal Ash Pond

On September 12, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (which covers federal courts in South Carolina, North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) issued a decision concluding that the migration of arsenic from coal ash stored in settling ponds and a landfill was not subject to the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) because the ponds and landfill were not “point sources” under the CWA. In Sierra Club v. Virginia Electric & Power Company, the defendant operated a coal-fired power plant in Chesapeake, Virginia for over 60 years and stored the coal ash waste on site in… Read more