PPL Should Live Up To Its Word
Make sure PPL lives up to its word before moving on
Friday, October 05, 2007

Unresolved issues

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection thinks it's time to let PPL Corp. off the hook for the utility's 2005 release of fly ash slurry into the Delaware River, provided PPL pays a $1.5 million fine.

It's not.

At some point, PPL must be released from responsibility for this incident, but some issues remain unresolved. The issue still being contested before a state Commonwealth Court judge isn't the amount of a fine, it's whether PPL has done enough to safeguard against another accident and whether it will continue to provide for long-term monitoring of the river.

Those objections are being raised by the Delaware Riverside Conservancy, an advocacy group recognized by the court as a third party in the negotiations between PPL and DEP.

The spill occurred in summer 2005, when wooden planks on a settling basin broke at PPL's Martins Creek generating facility, allowing an estimated 100 million gallons of fly ash slurry to drain into the Delaware. Fly ash, a byproduct of coal burning, contains arsenic, mercury, lead and other materials that potentially can harm fish, vegetation and other life.

PPL says it spent $35.5 million on the cleanup, and it pledged to keep an eye on residential wells and the effects of the pollution on aquatic life for years.

The Riverside Conservancy plans to argue that PPL and the DEP haven't guaranteed that long-term monitoring. Another group, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, also believes any settlement should be deferred until the long-term effects on the river are known. DEP officials say a Natural Resources Damage Assessment team, a collection of federal and state agencies, will continue to test and analyze the long-term impacts of the spill.

The ball is back in the court of the conservancy, which plans to state its case to the judge later this month.

Its position deserves to be heard. PPL should be kept to its word.