Company: SOJE
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000092122-25-000018
Chunk: 2291

Company: SOUTHERN CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 2
Chunk 2291
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 electric generating power plants. The CCR Rule requires landfills and surface impoundments to be evaluated against a set of performance criteria and potentially closed if certain criteria are not met. Closure of existing landfills and surface impoundments requires installation of equipment and infrastructure to manage CCR in accordance with the CCR Rule. In addition to the federal CCR Rule, the States of Alabama and Georgia finalized state regulations regarding the management and disposal of CCR within their respective states. In 2019, the State of Georgia received partial approval from the EPA for its state CCR permitting program, which has broader applicability than the federal rule. The State of Mississippi has not developed a state CCR permit program.

On June 7, 2024, the EPA published a final determination to deny the ADEM's CCR permit program. Alabama Power's permits to close its CCR facilities remain valid under state law. In the absence of an EPA-approved state permit program, CCR facilities in Alabama will remain subject to both the federal and state CCR rules. The ultimate impact of this action cannot be determined at this time; however, it may result in significant compliance costs.

The Holistic Approach to Closure: Part A rule, finalized in 2020, revised the deadline to stop sending CCR and non-CCR wastes to unlined surface impoundments to April 11, 2021 and established a process for the EPA to approve extensions to the deadline. The traditional electric operating companies stopped sending CCR and non-CCR wastes to their unlined surface impoundments prior to April 11, 2021 and, therefore, did not submit requests for extensions. Beginning in January 2022, the EPA issued numerous Part A determinations that state its current positions on a variety of CCR Rule compliance requirements, such as criteria for groundwater corrective action and CCR unit closure. The traditional electric operating companies are working with state regulatory agencies to determine whether the EPA's current positions may impact closure and groundwater monitoring plans.

In April 2022, the Utilities Solid Waste Activities Group and a group of generating facility operators filed petitions for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging whether the EPA's January 2022 actions establish new legislative rules that should have gone through notice-and-comment rulemaking. On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a decision dismissing the challenges to the EPA's January 2022 actions and interpretations related to the closure