RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – Virginia’s largest electric utility asked a federal appeals court Wednesday to overturn a judge’s ruling that the company is violating federal law by discharging arsenic through groundwater into surrounding waters from a coal ash storage site.
Dominion Energy argued before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the judge’s ruling was incorrect because groundwater contamination from solid waste such as coal ash is not regulated by the U.S. Clean Water Act. The utility said that’s left largely up to individual states to regulate.
But a lawyer for the Sierra Club argued that the discharge of arsenic from Dominion’s retired power plant in Chesapeake violates the Clean Water Act and Dominion’s permit to operate a wastewater treatment plant.
The arguments came nearly a year after U.S. District Judge John Gibney Jr. found that arsenic is illegally flowing from a landfill and ponds where Dominion stores coal ash, the heavy metal-laden byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity. Gibney said the arsenic is being conveyed directly into groundwater and, from there, flows to surface water.
The judge did not impose civil penalties on Dominion, saying the discharge does not pose a threat to public health or the environment.