EPA wants data on coal ash storage sites
One of the plants is owned by Columbia-based South Carolina Electric & Gas Co.; four belong to state-operated Santee Cooper; and Duke Energy and Progress Energy own the other two.
Details about the sites, results of inspections and histories of any spills or leakage have to be furnished by the utilities to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The request follows the failure in December of a dike at a Tennessee power plant that released tons of toxic coal ash, which ruined area residences and killed millions of fish.
Chances of such a catastrophe are remote, said Laura Varn of Santee Cooper.
“The walls are built with sound science, and we perform routine dike inspections and employ solid maintenance practices throughout the year,” Varn said.
About 61 percent of electric power consumed by S.C. homes, businesses and industries is generated by coal-fired generating plants.
Related News
How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble
LONDON - The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) studies the burgeoning business of cryptocurrencies.
It calculates that Bitcoin's total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 annualised terawatt hours (TWh), with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours.
The UK's electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the CCAF's best guess for Bitcoin.
And the electricity the Bitcoin miners use overwhelmingly comes from polluting sources.
The CCAF team surveys the people who manage the Bitcoin network around the world on their energy use and found that…
