March 30, 2008 - What sets Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville apart, however, isn't the course's layout or water hazards; this 18-hole playground is sculpted from 1.5 million tons of "fly ash," a charcoal-gray powdery substance left behind by burning coal to make electricity.
If this were not a golf course, an industrial park or a similar venture, it would have to be regulated like a landfill. But because of a provision in the environmental regulations encouraging the "beneficial use" of fly ash, it's considered a "coal combustion byproduct" project instead of an industrial waste landfill.
The ash for Battlefield Golf Club came from a Dominion Virginia Power coal-burning plant 20 miles west in Deep Creek. Monitoring wells at the plant's fly-ash landfill have shown that unacceptably high levels of arsenic leached into groundwater. Arsenic, one of a number of heavy metals found in fly ash, has been linked to cancer, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Seven years ago, homeowners near the golf course knew fly ash posed a threat to water quality and voiced their concerns to developers in community meetings.
2 comments:
Are Chesapeake residents concerned about homes that were built on top of toxic waste dumps (landfills)? How will chemical wastes be cleaned up from beneath 75 homes at Wingfield Pointe and 57 homes at River's Edge at Quailshire?
This issue should stay alive until fly ash is declared a toxic substance and all who were involved in this incident are brought to justice.
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