Starting late last month, Canadian power company TransAlta started the first steps of addressing any needed environmental cleanup at the company's Centralia plant.
The public will have the next month to comment on the effort.
The Washington state Department of Ecology announced last week that it had signed an order for TransAlta to begin environmental cleanup at its Centralia site and the start of a public comment period on the order that will extend through Feb. 2.
During the just over 30-day feedback period, the public will have a chance to comment or respond to a legal agreement signed between Ecology and TransAlta and a public outreach plan proposed by Ecology.
The Department of Ecology signed the cleanup legal agreement on Monday, Dec. 29. The agreement is effectively an order from Ecology for TransAlta to first assess the contamination of its coal site at 913 Big Hanaford Road in Centralia and then take actions to address any contamination. Ecology will oversee the process.
The process comes shortly after the site's last coal-fired power generation unit was slated to be shut down. A recent order from the U.S. Department of Energy just weeks before the long-mandated shutdown of the unit ordered it to remain operational through March. It remains unclear how TransAlta will walk the line between state and federal orders. However, the legal order signed by Ecology at the end of last year calls for the cleanup process to begin regardless of the status of the facility.
The cleanup order requires TransAlta to address contamination specifically in the air, soil, groundwater and sediment at the Big Hanaford Road site. A graphic on the Ecology website identifies at least four testing categories that show enough contamination to require cleanup in the site's groundwater and more in the site's sediment and soil.
“Running a coal-fired power plant can cause several different types of contamination,” reads an announcement from the Department of Ecology. “For example, coal ash has metals in it, such as mercury and arsenic. The plant used fuels like diesel, which could have leaked out of tanks or pipelines. Burning coal in a boiler makes smoke, which might have toxic chemicals in it.”
Part of the cleanup order identifies different instances since the creation of the coal facility that have caused environmental concerns. Routine tests and those caused by the discovery of fuel leaks and other issues over the more than 50 years since the site became operational have found higher than permitted levels of mercury, arsenic, iron, petroleum diesel and other materials that require cleanup under state law.
As part of the public comment period, Ecology will hold a single open house in the community later this month in the Centralia Timberland Library meeting room to share information on the cleanup process. All are welcome to attend the meeting, which will run for two hours from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 22.
The hearing will be held exclusively on the cleanup process and will not address other subjects relevant to the site, such as the recent federal order or the recent announcement by the company that it plans to convert one unit for natural gas.
The Department of Ecology is currently working on an environmental analysis study for the plant's conversion from coal to natural gas energy generation. For previous reporting by The Chronicle on the site's natural gas conversion, visit https://tinyurl.com/f2rs5zhv.
To view the legal order for the cleanup signed by Ecology as well as the department’s outreach, visit https://tinyurl.com/ye22ke6t.
To go directly to the online public comment form, visit https://tinyurl.com/3tcjxfj5.
