COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Less than a week after the Tennessee Valley Authority said it was looking at out-of-state sites to move millions of tons of coal ash, a South Carolina senator filed a bill that would charge the federal utility hundreds of millions of dollars to move it to his district.
The authority announced last week that it was considering six landfills in the South in which to deposit 3.5 million cubic yards (2.6 million cubic meters) of the toxin-laden byproduct from the old Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis, Tennessee. Coal ash is the byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity.
One site considered is in Bishopville, South Carolina, The Associated Press reported last weekend. After Sen. Thomas McElveen read the story, he scrambled to write a bill that would make it too expensive to move the ash to his district.
“There’s been a history of folks coming into rural counties like this and dumping some of the worst stuff in the world,” said McElveen, a Democrat from Sumter.
McElveen’s bill would charge $30 a ton to anyone bringing coal ash to any landfill in South Carolina outside of the state’s 12 most populous counties.