twenty second two thousand and eight hundreds of acres of land in tennessee were buried in toxic sludge after an accidental breach at a disposal pond at a t v a plant the breach resulted in the release of one point one billion gallons of the byproduct of burning coal it covered more than three hundred acres of land in a gray poisonous muck damaging homes and property and tainting nearby rivers this toxic stew contains high levels of arsenic so lenny i'm mercury and other dangerous substances it was quite literally a poisonous lump of coal dumped on a nearby community just three days before christmas last year exposure to these pollutants can wreak havoc on human health including increased risk of cancer birth defects reproductive problems gastrointestinal illnesses damage to the nervous system and kidneys and learning disabilities to children they have also been associated with acute symptoms of hair loss severe muscle cramps n joint pain confusion and blistering skin the cleanup of the catastrophic event that occurred in eastern tennessee is estimated to cost more than one billion dollars it completely destroyed three homes displaced all nearby residents probable docks and wiped out roads the kingston catastrophe caused the media the public and congress to focus attention on e p a s longstanding failure to promulgate meaningful regulations for the disposal of this material despite the litany of damage from coal combustion waste current regulations have been left largely to the states resulting in widespread inconsistency in waste management in the wake of the t v a disaster i wrote two letters to the e p a addressing the lack of national policy to regulate and monitor coal combustion wastes and its impact on health and the environment a decade after announcing that national regulations were needed the e p a by and lee said in march of this year that it would propose regulations for coal waste disposal by the end of two thousand and nine every state in the nation currently gets at least some of its electricity from coal fired plants each year these power plants along with industrial facilities produce approximately one hundred thirty million tons of coal combustion waste every day and almost every state coal ash is dumped into ponds dry landfills and abandoned mines accidental breaches are not the only threats associated with the management of coal combustion waste the low leakage of the toxins the waste contains even when dumped into dry but unlined storage sites has poisoned water supplies damage ecosystems and jeopardize public health news is into the soil and water i dangerous substances such as arsenic cadmium still any m and mercury in fact the national academy of sciences has identified twenty four potentially hazardous metals in coal  a moves forward with its regulations it must ensure that public health is protected for all disposal practices not just the type of wet empowerment ponds that lead to the tennessee disaster the good news is that these materials can be recycled in fact industry estimates that body five percent of coal ash is currently being beneficially reuse however not all methods reuse equally beneficial when it comes to protecting public health for example using coal fly ash to make concrete doesn't allow the dangerous chemicals to leach out and is also likely to reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to other means of producing concrete but other so called beneficial uses a less protective of public health using the material as filler or some road and embankments are as we will here today to build golf courses can lead to leakage of the very same poison into the drinking water e p a should encourage the beneficial uses that truly do protect public health and derive economic benefit to the industry w restricting those that have the potential to cause economic opposite will harm to nearby communities that is what the subject of today's hearing will be we look forward to hearing from witnesses let me turn and recognize the gentleman in fact a little bit more than that is produced by coal in the united states and ninety two percent of electricity in my home state of kentucky is produced by i definitely believe it is important we continue to be able to use in the united states for two main reasons first of all it provides cheap electricity which creates jobs and makes us more competitive in the global marketplace and second of all it is our most abundant resource here in the united states as we have about a two hundred fifty year endangerment finding to give them an opportunity to regulate c o two emissions which they've never done before we've seen that it's much more difficult to get permeating to burn coal and then we know that a and we're totally supportive of that and i know that today we have witnesses in the first panel who've experienced some health problems from they will tell us about what it is from obviously we want to do everything that we can to protect hell but as the chairman has already indicated there are many beneficial uses in building materials and structural steel for building sites by using this material and i would also point out that he has looked at this issue repeatedly about whether or not whether or not should be listed as a material states already regulate this material and we're willing to work with the federal government to regulate this material but if you're going to try to classify it as a hazardous material then there's to be a major issue on that because when you burn a material at over three thousand degrees temperature it's very difficult to see how the residue can be very hazardous and i might say that e p a looked at this  in a balanced way because if america is going to continue to create jobs and if america's going to continue to be competitive in the global marketplace then there is not any way that we can eliminate the use  fossil fuels the way albert gore and others are are suggesting that we do so this type of hearing is vitally important because it gives us an opportunity to look at it in a balanced approach we look forward to the recognizes the gentleman from california properly and how to dispose of the waste unfortunately some of the waste products have caused major health problems and i think the witnesses for coming forward today to discuss this i know it's difficult to come out here and sit in front of a panel so you deserve credit for that and i know there are some good ways to do it is the chairman mentioned encasing it in concrete is an excellent opportunity for us to to use that in a beneficial time we enacted clean air regulations this isn't just one mine in my district in ohio ohio lost thirty five thousand coal mining jobs so we better tread carefully on how we balance the environmental risk with what we do see and i agree with my colleague from kentucky and all out attack on coal coal mining coal use in this country and so i'll also be focusing on the impact to the guys who come from real famil real communities and were small communities and rural parts of my state were destroyed because the attack on coal but i also would like mr chairman to ask us consent for three letters to be some in the record fifteen members of this committee on this letter on both sides of the aisle this letter is a richer letter by our good friend from pennsylvania mr tim holden the second is from the alan only based on our past experience it is our position that classifying coal combustion as a hazardous waste is not warranted and would place unnecessary various on its beneficial use and reuse in the future we feel our approach of regulating coal combustion waste is from the office of public utilities and city of springfield illinois which is partially in my district combustion byproduct as hatteras would have a dramatic adverse consequences for this city for the city facilities that are permitted to receive hazardous waste these amounts reflect treatment and transportation costs and we have in the millions of dollars  what does this mean we better tread very very carefully this country and one of the worst economic periods that i can remember to have another attack on good jobs in this country from louisiana thank you mr chairman i appreciate the opportunity to discuss the impacts of coal combustion waste disposal well i strongly support measures that protect the safety of our nation's drinking water i'm concerned about the negative implications that could result from the regulation of coal combustion waste by e p a as a hazardous waste instead of under our c r a's subtitled the non hazardous waste authority this issue involves a very critical component to our country's overall energy policy and  decision to regulate coal combustion waste is hazardous waste could be devastating to our nation's economy mr chairman as we discussed this issue of energy policy in general i also want to take this opportunity to express my serious concerns about recent decisions from the current administration and the direction that this congress is taking regarding our energy policy while we await e p a s final ruling on how they plan to regulate coal combustion waste i also have serious concerns about the e p a s recent announcement regarding their proposed regulation of greenhouse gases regulation of greenhouse gas emissions would result in the largest power grab of any united states agency over our national economy the threat of heavy handed e p a regulation or cap and trade energy tax will result in millions of american jobs being shipped overseas to countries like china and india who don't have the current environmental regulations that we have today in my home state of louisiana thousands of jobs will be lost under a cap and trade energy tax and as a matter of fact there's a company in south louisiana that's currently basing their decision to locate in either brazil or louisiana in part on what washington does on emissions regulations not to mention the climate gate scandal which is not only proven that there have been efforts to silence those scientists who present evidence to the contrary of global warming alarmists would have are will believe about climate change but as we've seen the science on climate change was actually corrupted in an effort to help make their case it seems mr chairman that this administration and those running congress will stop at nothing to pursue this least two reasons for our members of congress need to hear from americans whose daily lives have been interrupted because of uncertainty surrounding a basic need like drinking water at some point today rain or shine a family  reason i believe this hearing is important because members of this committee must be made aware that their respective any new coal ash regulations the environmental protection agency is already doing a disservice providing contradictory test results  to some of the residents and by withholding hazard scores that could highlight dangers threatening the health and welfare of the citizens we are supposed to protect yesterday i sent a follow up request requesting immediate access to a hazard ranking has been withheld by a part of the deliberative process chairman of the federal government continues to deliberate for another eighteen months constituents from my district will continue to live with uncertainty about their drinking water their health and their homes if the congress and this administration a truly committed to transparency accountability certainly we can do better but rather than requiring you to continue to listen to more words i'd like to introduce you to someone who can tell you what it means live with uncertainty about the the green light means i'm good morning thank you for your time in two thousand on our local utility company dominion virginia power orchestrated an aggressive campaign convincing area residents and local city council that a golf course constructed with coal ash was not only safe but a great benefit for our neighborhood residents and local government were assured on numerous occasions and in various forums that the use of such materials posed no threat to our community and that any and all safeguards would be adhered to and quote so i asked in this specific use was as dark we now know different like thanks to the diligent work of a local newspaper reporter robert mccabe mr mccabe reported test of monitoring wells on a golf course sculpted with one point five million tonnes of fly ash yielded alarmingly high levels of toxins and ground water all of the homes in the immediate area rely on private wells as our water source immediately the local city government ordered area wells tested and requested the e p a s help undiscerning potential risks to our community nineteen months later my home has been tested multiple times by three different agencies including the results are inconsistent and confusing levels have been detected in excess of three times the e p a s action standard and on one such occasion water tests were done on the same day by three farms two of the three detected high  levels yet a call from the e p a s representative said good news there is no lead in your water you can imagine my alarm as a mother when the e p a representative asked about young children in my home and their ages and later that day i received a call from a doctor at the centers for disease control role urging me to get my children's lead level tested the e p a continues to test my water every few months and i get those results but to the lay person they are confusing and i feel as in the dark now as i was when all this started for example it turns out that all of the tests that have been conducted inside my home have been done at the only sink with the only dedicated filter auxilary filter let me put it that way and is used least in our home consequently all of the data that they have collected to this point is not a true representation of our exposure as the water we brush our teeth with bathe with has yet to be evaluated how did this happen for five years hundreds of truckloads of call lash were dumped daily in our community we've since learned that those same truck drivers were required to have hazmat licenses were wearing masks and protective clothing yet our children unknowingly played outside amongst this dangerous stuff neighbors recalled coming home and finding layers of gray chalky residue on a cold and services none of my neighbors had any inkling of the dangers we were being exposed to dominion did but we didn't we now know x for x warned of the dangers of heavy metal toxins leaching from coal ash when exposed to water yet coal ash was spread over a two hundred twenty acre site in our backyards in notoriously high water table and i think we have some pictures ladies and gentleman this is someone's yard and please understand that this is just a small area but roy if you could look over to the next picture that's my story we have recreational boating every time a storm comes through to our neighborhood please explain to me how it is that call last no liner was thrown into my backyard in an area like this and this is not a one time occurrence our streets and yards are underwater when storms come but even after dominion virginia power commissioned these abilities study discouraged using fly ash is a construction material they pushed on permit for a septic system on the golf course location were denied by the health department due to the high water table yet that one point five million tons of fly ash was dumped on the same site dominion pushed on in chesapeake the reverberation from this lack of regulation has been enormous numerous families have recently been diagnosed with cancer asthma and auto immune diseases not to mention our fear for our children's future health are these illnesses related to dust and water exposure it may take years for the effects of our exposure to this toxic waste dump to manifest themselves since may of two thousand and eight my family and other families in our neighborhood have not use their tap water to cook or drink we have been reduced to traveling to a municipal cister where two to three times per week we fill empty gallon jugs with water to bring back home for our use most of us still bathe and brush our teeth with the tap water what other alternative do we have and who is there to provide for our safety the financial ramifications are devastating as a professional realtor i can assure you that as long as the  our community our houses will not sell we are literally held hostage in our homes not at the barrel of a gun but by the cesspool of poisons in our backyard we have retired military veterans who have proudly served our country for twenty plus years they want to move but they can't because no one will buy their house elderly couple who have lost a spouse and cannot keep up with their want and need to downsize but they cannot my husband has been a self employed electrical contractor for over twenty five years the equity in our house is our retirement we have been doubt there is no equity in a home but no one will buy how we put our boys through college and what am i going to do with my children if my husband passes away one family in our neighborhood cannot qualify for financial aid for their child's college education because they own their home but it's worthless my children are afraid their friends parents are concerned about their children's exposure when visiting my home an eleven year old was at our house for a sleep over and asked me miss robin i just washed my hands do i need to do something about the poisoned water i was just excited that he washed his hands after going to the bathroom frankly but the virginia health department has been no help virginia's department of environmental quality let this happen again and has been a colossal disappointment the e p a they're out to lunch i have absolutely no faith and environmental protection agency that continues to come to my house but end till nine nineteen months after coming to my house just realizes that they're testing the wrong tap tap that my children brush their teeth and  we certainly cannot expect the local power company to operate in a conscientious manner of our government doesn't help we the public are stunned to find that there is no regulation in place to protect  current definition of beneficial use quite frankly as an oxymoron as long as coal ash remains unregulated we the people have no protection from the companies who use beneficial use as a cover for thank you for the issues that you're going to be looking at i have the unhappy distinction that this is now the second hearing that's occurred in this congress the first was a natural resources they've been devastating just as we heard from mr whitaker let me introduce gail queen before her illness forced her to stop working she was a supervisor in the family support division of the department of social and two aquifer that supplies my community drinking water and we all breathe the dust in was a community was informed of the problem in two thousand and seven we were given no and supplied today every two weeks i get bottled water to wash to do everything with every two weeks but this did nothing for exposure both in our drinking water and about the danger and protected me and my family and community long ago but we didn't know where the danger or even the dumping was going on thankfully the power company did finally take have to file for bankruptcy or foreclosure because of it's not worth anything because i have trouble breathing and i'm not a smoker my doctor has told supply meat to the local native american tribes in the four corners area of new mexico mr hunt is adjacent to the san juan generating station of public service company of new mexico and the san juan coal our children lost weight and complained of stomach they had the gesture and diarrhea there here was falling out and then healthy looking their teeth and eyesight were compromised to the extent they still wear glasses and require frequent monitoring the children's teachers reported they had difficulty with simple of concentration and comprehension one son was enrolled in special ed classes throughout his high school year cover the cost of hooking into the public water system for our family and they refused for two years we bought drinking water and carried it into our home until we could afford the connection with the public water system once we stopped using the well we can slowly to improve my wife kids and i had been sick at that time for over ten years my animals were not so fortunate i watched fourteen hundred head of sheep slowly suffer and die from the lack of safe drinking water within two years i lost my entire sheep herd and took it outside jobs rather than risk selling to tame unaided meat to our customers tours of duty in iraq afghanistan and germany all have some evidence of childhood problems they experience due to the polluted water my daughters have had very difficult pregnancies and deliveries which doctors have said may be the result of  childhood poisoning i have three grandchildren who have been diagnosed autistic also linked to heavy metal poisoning in their mothers and another who is my brother died of multiple developed multiple sclerosis and spent twenty years in a care unit my father died of cancer for my step brothers and sisters have died prematurely due to cancer and cancer related illnesses all were under the age of forty and healthy athletic children throughout their high school years with no apparent contributing illnesses all of them drank from the same polluted water wells and saint i rely heavily on others to help me with the management and operation of my because although recovered i still suffer many side effects from poison into conclusion this is only the story of my family i have many neighbors with similar stories some of lost young children others have parents and children with major health problems many have lost their livelihoods their animals and the ability to provide for their families because of pollution that has come down the shelter where oil and through our underground water sources improperly dispose polish they too were all good neighbors settlements in the us in exchange for their silence and agreement to sign a hold harmless contract my experience is that the energy industry cannot be entrusted with innocent lives or to regulate themselves for the good of the community in lieu of a profit for their stockholders i urge you to take every measure available to you to prevent this from happening to anyone anywhere in our nation and for the cost and city water so we did not have to haul a city hall water was only one hundred seventy five dollars and they refused to do that and you know my kids and any of you can respond to those who are on our second panel right after you we will hear from some witnesses that the characteristics of coal ash are similar to that of dirt or rocks and that the material is extremely unlikely to pose a health risk how would you respond to that statement pardon me how would you respond to that statement coal ash dangers and just lesions on the brains and the grow your eyes out and coal ash is a dangerous substance and it needs to be controlled rather than stockholders making a huge profit they need to take care of it in a proper way there are no federal regulations you know this area of the state have regulations all they have responsibility for go up to a it looks like an outhouse i wish i had pictures for you the local city government did build a structure around it so that we weren't exposed to the elements when we were trying to fill up those gallon jugs three times a week world our toxic waste material but we turned a blind eye because we were quote unquote personally responsible for making sure that that stuff went down the right  and all of us obviously feel badly about what's happened to you three individuals and you know the problem is with no national standard some states do better job than other states and regulating this problem  are doing nothing which is a real problem and in my state of pennsylvania our department of environmental protection has provided oversight on beneficial reuse since one thousand nine hundred eighty five and implemented a makes this rule making that they say there is clearly a need for regulation of states with lax requirements or no requirements but they should look at states that do have stringent requirements that are doing this right and not preempt their laws  conflicting results from the from the testing right did you ever have an independent lab did you ever you yourself hire somebody you know if i i'm thinking about what i would do in your situation if  that was testing the water samples for you know i did not personally commissioned an agency to test the water the chesapeake tested the water they also hired  they have tested in two locations at my home they have tested at the wellhead and they've gone in and tested at my kitchen tap and this has been done every single time when i say inconsistency sometimes they'll come in and take a first drawl and then they'll purge the system for five minutes and then they'll purge it for ten minutes in twenty minutes and they'll do various test along that timeline and then they were the ones that and when i say that they are conflicting and confusing that i get this report that i get has all of the different that have been detected but i still don't know city of chesapeake on their documentation included that benchmark so you're getting data but you're not getting any experts to sit down as i mean as a lay person to explain what that data means in real terms to you and your family know and i would welcome that as a matter of fact it was offered by one of our city representatives and they said you know the e p a is the expert so if it's ok with you what we would like to do with your permission is to turn over those results to the disputing what happened to you and your family if you can see what happened and then if you started to drink bottled water or other water started to recover was there ever any testing done by any enforcement agency  personal experiences and listening to your testimony i think that i understand that each of you have well water you don't have city water you don't have county water but all of well water is that was in good nutritional condition and i don't know where he got that information i really love to know but as far as the water that's drying that was well  you are not really satisfied with the way the state dealt with the way the state environmental people dealt with this the way the utility companies dealt with it which is understandable but i would ask that any of you go to  is we have a lot of it we know that e p a has looked at this coal ash repeatedly through the years and we know that one percent or less of has a hear the utility companies obviously have a dog in the fight you can find experts out there that will say that absolutely coal ash is dangerous certainly should not be certainly should not be forth and testifying very compelling words you've spoken this morning you know when coal fired plants are required to scrub their emissions from the mercury another sulfates and so on i  if you think that mr mccabe's work brought light to the dangers there if that if you hadn't done that investigative work do you think you'd still be in the dark about the risks and dangers well i'm still in the dark  this to light we would still be drinking the water and we owe him a huge debt and so you'd be facing potential health problems in your family and your neighbors so he does deserve a certain amount of state agencies was conducted in ignorance or do you think that they knew the dangers and still prevented action from me take it on your behalf did i feel it was criminal and there one thing i will say about the man is that we never tried to take legal action we tried to take it to court and i've only got an eighth grade education and what happened was all said and done our lawyer was up there testifying against us and we refused the settlement which was a hundred and ninety thousand dollars and we rode on t and you know bless their hearts they went down that it was a nuisance litigation it cost me seventy three thousand three hundred dollars for a tax attorney to keep from with all the second panel witnesses please take their seats at the at the testimony table please justice mr evans worked on talks of coal waste for the boston based nonprofit clean air taskforce servants began her career as an assistant regional council at the environmental protection agency region one seven so you can begin your testimony when you're ready thank you members of the subcommittee thank you for holding this hearing to examine the threat posed to our health and environment by call substance generated by power plants that burn call when mismanaged this toxic waste damages the health and environment of americans nationwide by poisoning drinking water falling the air and destroying aquatic ecosystem federal action on this issue is imminent last march e p a administrator lisa jackson made a commitment to publish a proposed rule governing the disposal of coal ash by years and my testimony today recognizes the primary goal of this  impending rule the protection of human health the committee will hear today from has heard today excuse me from witnesses whose health and the health of their families and neighbors have been seriously compromised by exposure to the toxic contaminants in a today's witnesses represented three separate instances of coal ash contamination but they have three important things in common first dry dumping of kalash not disposal caused serious harm much of the focus this year has been on the deadly dangers posed by weather aspirin disposal has drawn national attention since the cataclysmic failure of the t v a dam whose release of over one billion gallons of toxic sludge was one hundred times the size of the but today it is significant to note that dry disposal and reuse of dry ash is a cause of damage this is not surprising e p a has identified a significant threat from dry disposal and on line landfills estimating that such disposal can result in  risk of cancer fifty times e t a s regulatory goal second at each site state law was woefully inadequate to protect the health of the affected communities today regulation of coal ash is left totally up to the states but in new mexico virginia and maryland where the written says besides the states failed to put in place even the most basic safeguards in none of these states would even household garbage have been allowed to be disposed in the manner that ash was in these states  most of the states in the us improper unsafe and ultimately harmful disposal of toxic gas is permitted and sometimes even encouraged third the witnesses and their communities were harmed economically while the focus today is properly and how gail queen may tragically lose their home to foreclosure these economic hardships produce stress that tears at the fabric of our communities the dumping of ash in all three situations was the cheapest route for industry but the true costs were borne by these witnesses and their neighbors as a former e p a attorney i work to enforce the resource conservation recovery act this experience gave me a deep appreciation of the statutes fundamental goal in one word the driving force of recruiters prevention congress passed require in one nine hundred seventy six to put in play regulations to prevent in the first instance the mismanagement of waste in order to prevent the migration of toxic chemicals further in one thousand nine hundred eighty congress explicitly directed e p a to require safe disposal of coal ash but for decades nearly three years and sorry nearly thirty years e p a has failed to promulgated national regulations and this emission is huge and dangerous more toxics like mercury and other has this metals at the power plant stacks the bright side today is that the prevention of harm from the dumping of ash is a problem we know how to solve isolation of toxic waste from water and engineers landfills is twentieth enforceable regulations that will prevent the harm that these witnesses have suffered from occurring again about two years ago i held mr hunt's in some granddaughter and i'd like nothing better than to guarantee to her that what happened to her grandfather will not happen to her family in water flow in mexico nor to mrs queen's grandchildren in gamble's maryland nor to miss pierce's children in chesapeake virginia this sub committee may have a hand in making this same guarantee thank you again for the opportunity to comment on this critically important issue and thank you especially for allowing the witnesses in the previous panel to have their voices heard thank you mr evans the second witness i'd like to call  dr mary fox she's an assistant professor of policy and management at the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health she is part of the core faculty of the school's risk sciences and public policy institute and a research focuses on the human health effects of exposure to chemical mixtures dr fox are super ph d environmental and of occupational health policy from the johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health fox please begin your testimony when you're ready thank you and good morning types and severity of health effects of coal combustion waste constituent cosmetic changes to organ function changes to cancer as a nation we produce a large volume of waste and types of disposal distribution into the broader environment taking together these considerations presents us with a public health protection challenge some examples of the health effects of specific constituents include cancer associated with arsenic neurological effects associated with aluminum lead in manganese effect on the gastrointestinal system related to brilliant copper is important to note that multiple call combustion constituent contribute to certain health effects exposure to combinations or mixtures of these constituents may increase the risk of developing these health problems as we have seen in some of the pictures this morning from the particular site people can come into contact with combustion waste through breathing if the dust is in the air or through drinking water if constituents have  site into groundwater that is tapped by drinking water wells and as we have heard not far from here in maryland combustion ways to reclaim a former sand and gravel pit constituents evaluating community unfortunately systematic health effects research in any one small community will have limited statistical power to detect changes in health outcomes in absence of traditional epidemiological studies human health risk assessment methods are available to valuate population exposures to multiple contaminant mixtures because coal combustion waste is a complex mixture of constituent risk assessment methods will be our goal in meeting with legislative staff recently and attending this hearing is to ensure that all pertinent technical information is available to those that may be involved in this important decision making process my brief time today i'll focus primarily on some illumination on that topic and as usual i think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle classes derived from the in organic minerals in coal and as such it's elemental composition similar to the composition of rocks and soil that's inevitable trace metals make up less than one percent of the total composition however while the trace elements are qualitatively the same as those in rocks and so i'll they are enriched slightly relative to rocks and soil and therefore the net material does need to be managed found them to be similar there are literally hundreds of other laboratory leaching protocols that have been used by pre and other researchers to evaluate coal ash and there's quite a bit of disagreement among the technical community as to which is the best procedure we are coordinating with e p a and interpretation and use of a new set of protocols that offer a number of benefits and understanding leaching mechanisms however the test produce a lot of data that requires careful evaluation application  c indiscriminate use of selected results from these complicated tests is both misleading and inaccurate powerplants have been generating and managing coal ash for more than sixty years e p a released a report in two thousand and seven describing sixty seven management sites with ground water surface water impacts characterized as proven or potential damage most of these damage cases represent older facilities without liners onsite releases and low taxes  constituents remediation is actively occurring or has been completed at nearly all of the damage conversely a daily e p a report recently found that nearly all new disposal cells built between hundred four and two thousand and four were aligned and included groundwater monitoring networks several states such as wisconsin have had successful non hazardous disposal requirements in place for many years the best outcome in two thousand and seven over fifty million tons of c c p s were used rather than dispose the primary uses for flash are as an ingredient in concrete and cement and used in geotechnical cells  sixty trillion b to use in energy consumption which is roughly the equivalent of the amount of energy used in one point seven million homes are a decent sized city thirty two billion gallons in water consumption and eleven eleven million tons in greenhouse gas emissions and that equates to about taking two million autos off the road in a year in addition rather than disposal say the land area the size of central park in new york in two thousand and seven in conclusion then released may call last year front page news item and we're all a lot more aware of some of the issues surrounding coal ash what we need to do now is to find a clear path forward that ensures safe disposal and allows for continued  and along with that we need to identify and implement components of successful disposal site designs and practices this is not an intractable or difficult task and i agree with lisa that there are technologies out there for dealing with these the disposal of these materials there are many examples of successful c c p disposal sites you know all parts of the country right now finally we need to continue to grow the use of these materials and applications that are demonstrated to be both safe and of value pittsburgh pennsylvania dr mcgraw has thirty years of experience in occupational and environmental medicine and his received a master's degree in public health from johns hopkins university  window into the basement and i helped my grandfather dump the coal ash on our garden which grew wonderfully as the congressman from florida mentioned earlier when i left the area to attend school i ended up back in pittsburgh i've been in there i've been there for some thirty years now i serve on the faculties of  the university of pittsburgh schools of medicine and public health enough top medical students and residents for several decades i previously was at least briefly on the faculty at johns hopkins prior to coming home i'm on the attending medical staff at a number of prominent area hospitals i see patients in those hospitals in clinics in their work  sites and in their homes i have been in coal mines steel mills coal tar plants i've been on coke ovens i've been just about everywhere that coal has been used only hearts of stone could fail to be moved to compassion by the stories and personal plight of the three families who spoke before but tragedies occur all too frequently in the form of tsunamis or typhoons in thailand the philippines and mainland china hurricanes like katrina in new orleans and earthquakes in peru and russia and elsewhere around the world have brought death and devastation volcanic eruptions and in mexico elsewhere  leave in their wakes tragedy that's all too real but in my experience the main tragedy in coal come busting is the devastating job loss and economic devastation in the wake of steel mill shattering and coal mine closures in southwestern pennsylvania southeastern ohio the mountains of west virginia kentucky illinois and elsewhere it would be truly a misadventure tragic misadventure to plunge these people even deeper into economic darkness in the in the course of my work in two thousand and five i was asked to see a number of individuals including adults and children half dozen maybe even more than that when a accidental spill of fly ash occurred in the forward township not far from pittsburgh this was a large pile of ash that had been there for probably fifty years and slid down the hill into this tiny community and coated the ground where these people lived a foot or two in depth and this was a soft flaky ash much like you would see coming out of any power  coal coal powered facility these people on orginally waited around in it for days cleaned it shoveled it swept it breathed it in their own personal clean ups before some attention was paid  the the e p a in pennsylvania is very good and they they came to the rescue and ultimately that cleanup has been underway i saw those individuals as individual patien i listened to their stories i evaluated them physically and i could find no objective abnormalities in any of those people simultaneously or concomitantly the allegheny county health department and part of dr bruce dickson who's just a marvelous physician examine these people tested their urine their blood their hair their nails and could find no evidence of any increased exposure to any heavy metals or any medical problems subsequently these people were re examined by the county health department in two thousand and nine last spring and once again were given a clean bill of health after extensive evaluation last year i had the opportunity to go to tennessee and i'm not sure why i was asked other than the fact that i had upheaval down there that was caused by the the release of a large stock of coal fly ash in a retention pond which gave way after a very long period of heavy rain much like the weather caused the problems in forward township this ash slid largely into the waterways nearby but it did slide into the yards and homes of i think probably about five or six families whose houses were certainly adversely affected i also had the opportunity aside from touring the area not to examine any of these individuals but to participate in a an open meeting at a local school in which any community residents are interested parties could attend and probably some hundred fifty people or so came some of whom  residents and some others were just interested and asked questions about the potential adverse health effects of their exposure in this setting and i tried to reassure them that their exposure now and in the future was extremely unlikely to be detrimental to their personal health the health of their children their animals cetera in the course of my practice i've had the opportunity address the potential toxicity of heavy heavy metal such as arsenic and a wide variety of settings i've examined hundreds if not thousands of individuals whose work has required that they be in the presence of compounds like arsenic and coal and coal tar and coke oven emissions and other potentially toxic materials and as it was pointed out earlier all of these all of these are natural occurring minerals they occur in the sub strata of the earth they're released by volcanic eruptions by far of fires and far greater amounts that are released as a springs all over north america and we eat it every day in our food stuffs drink in our water that's not to say that it's not potentially toxic but are a wide variety of other materials cars are dangerous too little bit about the ingestion of arsenic or other heavy metals over a period of many years in terms of what that risk might be   and the contamination of the groundwater there it may have been going on for years and may continue for some time so chronic exposure to arsenic and some of the  constituent elements over a period of time are related to serious medical consequences that all depends on the concentration the dose the area of exposure how it's taken in our body has numerous capabilities for a limiting potential toxins from a very well constructed to manage our health despite exposure to many natural elements and while there are huge concentrations of materials like arsenic sadly and the well water in places like taiwan and bangladesh they are many degrees of magnitude higher than any that might ever be potentially even  occurring in the united states in any conceivable way so you are saying that the hundreds of thousands of people who die in bangladesh related to ingestion of arsenic is something that we shouldn't be concerned about here is  extrapolate them for the purposes of what lesson you want to do bangladesh terms of exposure to those those levels in those countries are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of micrograms per l organization have identified arsenic as a question to jim do you disagree with that finding no i don't miss chairman let me give you provide you with an analogy thousands of women and possibly men are injected on a daily basis with botulinum toxin the deadliest material to humankind they were injected in their faces for cosmetic purposes one eighteenth of a millionth of an ounce is a lethal dose for a human being and yet it goes into syringes and into people's bodies on a daily basis there are many many toxins that we either voluntarily or involuntarily expose ourselves to on a daily basis once again it depends on the dose level and in this country those levels will never be replicated if ever no no i don't think that's what we're learning here and and we're seeing this in the testimony of the witnesses voice and that if enough of it is placed in areas that are adjacent to populated areas that that it can leach into the water system and over a sustained period of time there could be a dramatic impact on human beings as the injustice materials so we're not talking about what you were referring to earlier about a one time  time exposure here we're talking about something that is with all due respect mr chairman three cases as tragic as they might be do not represent epidemiology i have looked at countless workers who have been working for decades with exposure to these and other materials and seen no evidence of any harm and they certainly were exposed to a far higher level public whatever it was you know three thousand young people are going to begin smoking today in america one thousand of them will die from smoking related illnesses and two will not really are concerned so you may yet again you're not an epidemiologist i don't think i have studied it extensively and i   if there's just a small number of examples here or there are more people like the witnesses that we saw on the first panel that represent the population that we are concerned with absolutely thank you i would say we does admit that and one reason that we can say with some certainty that it's a drop in the bucket is that so many of these stem it's are not monitored and if you don't monitor the downside you don't know exactly what is what is leading them so i i sites but i challenge her to identify numbers of individuals or communities where it has been demonstrated objectively medically that they have developed either life threatening illnesses or have died as a result of exposure to coal tar ash i challenge her because it doesn't exist i've seen people die a thousand different ways mr chairman but i've never seen one either die or become ill from exposure to coal ash but i'd be happy to provide the committee with the subcommittee excuse me with medical reports from people who in this mostly occurs in litigation where they have to draw the connection between the and the disease but we do have reports to that effect in concert with those to the committee anecdotal legal cases do not represent epidemiology that's not science that's law well i appreciate that earlier the property cannot be sold entire community is frozen we have we have widespread health care health impacts and to a certain extent there's been a see no evil hear no evil aspect to this issue over the years so we're just kind of catching but this issue in the same way that we just you know that we caught up with the tobacco issue as well and i think that the witnesses here today provide very compelling evidence that there is a problem here that can to the long term exposure to these elements is dangerous  and and again the e p a is in the process of completing their recommendations and when they do we'll have them here for the hearing and we'll be able to ask those questions let me turn now and recognize the gentleman from michigan  as well it's regulated as an industrial waste in the state of michigan and my question is how many states have a similar type of procedure employed liners so their states are requiring them or their voluntarily installing wires with respect to ground water monitoring almost all landfills are our ground water monitoring they have far back as ninet ponds have had a little bit more checkered history with respect to monitoring and it was more like half that time had monitoring in the ninety's when we did a study on this i'm not sure what the number is now in michigan a good share of the waste is actually used for highway cement particleboard that type of thing in fact i'm aware of a letter that the michigan department of transportation sent to the federal highway administration eighty to ninety percent of the ash is used for this type of purpose in the united states we're closer to about forty have the question is if we and let me before i respond to the recycling question let me just quickly go back to michigan's landfill regulations because i think it's in the can statement regarding the fifty six facilities that were built one thousand nine hundred four in two thousand to have any light wouldn't go from there or financial sure moving to my next question if it was classified as a hazard is what would in fact we'd be able to recycle much of the material there like we do today yes or be an incentive to recycle waste requirements that these facilities would increase the cost of disposal by a factor of ten would be up into the billions of dollars for most for the utility industry thirteen billion dollars i think was one estimate that was provided that's a significant cost  we have done an analysis at the impact of that cost as well as the cost of phasing out what management what those costs would actually do to utilities how many units it would cause cost billions of dollars more that would  be have to be passed along to the right right i would assume so you know i'm not familiar with utility finance a line my time is expired tell me how would it impact recycling from everything waste nation would have a chilling effect on any use just simply because using a material when it's deemed hazardous if it goes in one direction and usable when it goes in another direction is not a workable situation th industry and worked thirty one years at thompson and braddock i worked there two summers and realized that i don't want to be a steel worker i appreciate steel industry and coal all my constituents get their electricity from coal in pittsburgh and i've lived my entire fifty six years there we pittsburghers did much appreciate mr carnegie dumping always waste in the the allegheny rivers and at one point those rivers got very dark and nobody fished in those rivers and regulation finally were put in place that made sure that people just didn't indiscriminately dumb things into the rivers or up into the air john sermons a dear friend of mine at the current c e o of us steel and he'll tell you that he thinks that a clean environment and a steel industry can coexist this committee's not talking about putting the coal industry or the steel industry out of business but what we are saying that in this country there are many states that have no regulations on this or very lax regulations pennsylvania's been overseeing beneficial reuse of coal ash since one thousand nine hundred five we have standards in place hundred two states like wisconsin have good standards we believe that these industries can coexist with good regulation and partnerships so when you said to your testimony that you are much more concerned about the job loss in the coal industry than you were about the potential health hazards i would tell you that we we need to do both while we can protect jobs and protect people's lives that's what we're trying to research here on the  committee i'm familiar with forward township i used to represent it for eight years before redistricting i'm curious how did you come to get involved in the forward township case you mentioned you were involved in any examining people there i believe that they were referred to me through the graduate school of public health at the university of pittsburgh where i've been a faculty member for a long time because they knew me as someone who would see anyone for virtually any kind of problem and i believe the chairman of the partment referred them all to me when they called into his office you know i don't disagree with anything you just said well i respect the need to have a clean environment and certainly want nothing less myself and i think the commonwealth should be particularly proud in having already done a good job in that but to classify a relatively benign material as a hazardous waste would i think lead to a cascade of events that would cost jobs and enormous resources to the power industry the coal industry the steel industry and all the way down at your testimony then that you believe coal ash to be completely benign and not a health risk to anyone that's incorrect it just eat this stuff and well i did write you i you know that i had already made it if you put some on my cereal it might not be a very tasty but you'd have to put it on a long long time before we would get to the point where those poor people in other countries are consuming it and would be at risk in this country and likelihood of that happening i want to be certain when i hear talk like that that you know you talked about the arsenic levels and bangalee in bangladesh you're certainly not subscribing to the fact that we should adopt bangladesh water standards here in the united states i mean you're  saying it's ok to drink that much i don't know that now it's enough was more it less water that wouldn't concern you of course not now all i'm doing is contrast ing and trying to show that with any material however apparently been nine whether it's salt sugar arsenic mercury or anything else there is a dose and there is a length of time of risk exposure that's required to cause a potential problem presumably and this and these ho halls would probably already met the government requirements of introducing the appropriate kind of new green fluorescent bulbs all of which contain a particularly lead for a metallic mercury and for which there is no hazardous waste reclamation plant in the right place to my knowledge my time is starting to run out i have a couple more dr fox you just heard what dr mcgraw said he basically says we could eat this stuff and it might not taste so good but it's not going to characteristic bleaching procedure protocol which is used by e p a to test for the hazardous characteristics of trace metals that they would consider critical to a hazardous waste designation arsenic selenium barium cadmium silver chromium lad and mercury and that e p r i data from all the analysis and tests that they have conducted three or four times i don't have right now the most recent one that was two thousand and even they decided not to classify this is a hazardous material in your test where there are any types of calls our coal from anywhere in the world but we've tested a broad range we have a very representative data we know i hear today our chairman stated that we need a balanced approach here because we have to use coal to meet our electrical demand and remain competitive in the world and to continue to create jobs and not lose jobs and the thing that bothers me about ms evans and the group that she represents in her testimony she says we need a federal standard to police this disposal which i agree with we do and then she goes on the says even if we get one it's not enough so we need a federal standard but even if we get one that's not  recycling rates significantly i think you're referring probably to wisconsin does more stringent regulation include a hazardous waste subtitle c designation there is no designation currently  subtitle i don't think it would change i think that there might even be tightening that would have to be done on the wisconsin regulations so there might even be more incentive if costs go up to dispose of waste in line landfills there'd be more incentive to can you describe just quickly benefits the environment for recycling the cost yes i listened some of those in my in my presentation but there's any benefits in energy savings water savings greenhouse gas emissions and land use those are probably what i would l i know that my colleague from illinois and you know i knew one more and then i'm going to get into yes i just want to make sure i think that this question about classifying coal ash is hazardous wast and the potential for it to eliminate or at least greatly reduce reuse opportunities is an issue that this panel out of that we need to talk about i think about that that conflict or at least that potential conflict that we need to flush out i think that's why it's that is of closest to the citizens of illinois and has a vested interest in protecting the health of the citizens of eleanor dr mcgraw yes or no define that's a study of populations and in contrast ing groups of individuals within a population a designated population who have a specific injury or illness and comparing them with those individuals who don't and trying to determine as a result what might have led to that specific problem whether there was a common so you're saying there was a scientific method in essence yes i studied epidemiology as part of my training and scientific method creates and we deal in this with the whole climate debate is that there are facts there's basic facts that can be gathered and review to make an analysis on what is going on and that's what you are testifying to and that's what your testimony says facts versus presumption which is what i'm saying and that's why i'm trying to make the  complex simple because we always talk about arsenic we've talked about arsenic in this committee since i've been a member a swimming pool filled with arsenic would be hazardous to human health wouldn't you agree dr mcgraw failed cheaper to drain an olympic sized swimming pool filled with arsenic than it would be to take out the one drop of water and the issue is  because based upon what science we're having the same debate on the climate gate issue when the scientists can't give us the facts then you go on emotion and when emotions run rampant it cost the jobs that you're referring to that i refer to in this whole issue so i applaud my colleague mr matheson for trying to get to to the point of we better be careful not to run emotions because there is a cost benefit analysis of all this and we all understand that so let's get to the facts and i think why your testimony so compelling is because you're doing it based on your great credentials epidemiology background and on the facts of study of the health of individuals and i want to thank you for your time now you go back to my time of the environmental protection agency a problem getting new rules that will deal with the public health related issues here but of course the question of jobs is also part of this discussion  we have heard here today that there are materials that are hazardous they have poisoned people they have destroyed homes and have contaminated the environment no one is talking about shutting down the coal industry what we are talking about is prohibiting unsafe disposal practices from being allowed to continue so that we can and we can ensure that there continues to be food we don't want to prohibit but at the same time we want to ensure we put in those protections for public health we thank each of the witnesses we want to continue to work with you we apologize to you mr evans and to others i know you have other points which we would like to include in the record in its written form if you would like to provide it to the committee is hearing