A Thursday letter urging that coal ash be labeled a hazardous substance left the impression Alabama suffers from too little federal oversight in energy and business ("Should be labeled as hazardous," Your Views). But cases like coal ash show we have the opposite problem.
First, there is a strong scientific consensus that coal ash is safe when stored and handled properly. The U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and various state agencies have studied coal ash in depth and concluded its toxicity levels are far below the criteria for hazardous substances. And there's another important group well aware of how safe it is: American workers. We use coal ash every day for things like roads, drywall and soil stabilization.
Regulation is never without a cost. Coal-fired plants are by far the most economically efficient way to produce baseload utility power in the South. If coal ash is labeled hazardous, plants will be forced to build new infrastructure to contain it and ship it away (many plants are built along railroads for this very reason). For many plants, this is impossible, so they would be forced to close, which inevitably means higher power bills. And some large manufacturing plants, dependent on nearby coal plants as a source of cheap energy, will be forced to relocate, taking quality jobs with them.
But the letter is right in that the law and spirit of Alabama mean working to come up with our own solutions to our own problems, not waiting on one-size-fits-all policies from a unchecked bureaucracy in Washington. The people of Alabama know what they need, and they've had enough of overbearing regulation that kills jobs.
Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy