Illinois’ only national scenic river gets protection as owner of abandoned power plant agrees to clean up toxic waste

Chicago Tribune - 6/23/2021

Efforts to protect the only national scenic river in Illinois are closer to reality after the owner of an abandoned power plant agreed Monday to excavate toxic waste dumped into the flood plain for more than a half century.

Under a legal settlement brokered by lawyers from Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office, Texas-based Vistra will drain pits of water-soaked coal ash along the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River, about 120 miles south of Chicago. The company also will dig a trench to collect contaminated groundwater and monitor the fast-eroding riverbank after major storms.

By the end of the year, Vistra is required to hold a public hearing about its plans to close the site. The company previously had sought permission to cap the coal ash and leave it behind a wall of rocks nearly six football fields long. But the deal with Raoul’s office requires Vistra to remove and safely dispose of the waste away from the Middle Fork.

The agreement, outlined in a proposed court order, appears to resolve a complaint filed nearly a decade ago by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. It also marks the first test of new state regulations that require Vistra and other energy companies to clean up coal ash dumps near two dozen other power plants, most of which will be closed by the end of the decade.

“Our work now will be to ensure that the terms of the order are carried out in a manner that permanently protects the river and the communities that depend on it,” said Lan Richart, co-director of the Eco-Justice Collaborative, a Champaign-based group that helped draw attention to threats to the Middle Fork.

Located a few miles downstream from a popular kayak and canoe launch, Vistra’s three coal ash pits were dug into the flood plain by Illinois Power, which built a coal-fired power plant next to the river in 1955 and sold it in 2000 to Dynegy, another Texas-based company.

By the time Dynegy closed the Vermilion Power Station in 2011, the pits swelled with enough coal ash slurry to fill the Empire State Building nearly 2½ times. Vistra took on the liability when it absorbed Dynegy as part of a corporate merger.

Two nonprofit groups, Prairie Rivers Network and Earthjustice, sued for action in 2018, citing Dynegy’s own reports documenting how multicolored muck seeping into the Middle Fork is concentrated with arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese and other heavy metals found in coal ash.

Representatives of both groups said they are cautiously optimistic the state’s agreement with Vistra will prompt the changes they’ve sought through the courts. The goal, said Jenny Cassel, a Chicago-based Earthjustice attorney, is to ensure the river is “restored to its scenic glory and preserved for future generations.”

In a statement, Vistra said its executives still believe they could safely leave the coal ash in place or move it to another spot on company property farther away from the river. But “given the unique nature of the site and to resolve the pending dispute with the state of Illinois,” the company said, “we have agreed to close all of the impoundments by removal.”

The Middle Fork winds through east central Illinois amid corn and soybean fields and clusters of wind turbines perched on moraines that interrupt the flat farmland. About 17 miles of the river in Vermilion County are supposed to be protected under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, including the stretch that flows past Vistra’s coal ash pits.

Until now neither state nor federal officials did much to prevent pollution from leaching into the river.

Former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s political appointees repeatedly delayed action on stringent safety regulations for handling coal ash. At the federal level, an appellate court ruled in 2018 that Obama-era regulations weren’t tough enough and did nothing to prevent leaks at older dumps like Vistra’s along the Middle Fork.

The Trump administration responded to the court order with an even weaker set of rules. President Joe Biden has promised to revisit the issue and has said he will crack down on pollution in vulnerable communities.

Nearly all of the coal ash dumps in Illinois are leaching pollution into lakes, rivers and groundwater near low-income communities, state records show.

Drinking water supplies are threatened near 10 of the 24 sites, including two in Will County. Another in north suburban Waukegan is contaminating groundwater that flows toward Lake Michigan.

mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com