Here are some recent developments (as of late February 2012) over groundwater contamination from coal combustion by-products (fly ash) taken from Dominion Virginia Power’s Deep Creek Power Plant and used in 2002 to construct the Battlefield Golf Club’s course in Chesapeake. On February 21, lawyers for about 400 people living near the golf course sued Dominion, the golf course’s owners, and two other parties, alleging that 10 people were damaged by groundwater contamination and asking for $2 billion in damages. The complaint filed on February 21 alleges that the contamination from the golf course has affected some nearby residential wells. A previous lawsuit, filed in March 2009, was dismissed in 2011 after the judge dismissed much of the case because plaintiffs had not shown sufficient evidence of damages from contamination. Meanwhile, also in February a $10-million lawsuit against Dominion and another party was filed by a contractor who alleges that his work with fly ash in building the golf course over five years contributed to his developing kidney cancer. Source: Chesapeake fly ash suit against Dominion refiled, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 2/22/12.
Here is background on the situation and some previous developments: 1) Starting in 2002, some 1.5 million tons of ash from Dominion Virginia Power’s Deep Creek Power Plant were used in building the golf course. Starting in March 2008, a series of Virginian-Pilot articles described the use of the ash and alleged impacts on nearby groundwater. In August 2008, Dominion offered to provide up to $6 million to extend water-supply lines to the area near the golf course. In April 2010, the U.S. EPA reported that it had found no public-health threat from contaminants in the soil beneath the course. Since 2008, the EPA had paid a contractor to test 22 golf-course wells and 55 nearby residential wells. In those tests, arsenic, lead, and other contaminants were found in the golf-course test wells, but EPA concluded that these materials were not moving from the golf course to the residential wells. Lead had been found in some residential wells and the EPA offered to do further tests on those wells. Dominion is to continue monitoring the golf course wells four times annually, under oversight by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). No current risk from golf course fly ash, EPA says, Virginian-Pilot, 4/23/10.
2) In October 2010, Allen Brockman, who worked from 2001 to 2009 as a groundwater specialist for the Virginia DEQ, provided the Virginian-Pilot with an affidavit in which Mr. Brockman asserted that the agency should not have allowed the course to be constructed with the fly ash, that the presence of contamination on the course should have led the DEQ to order the ash to be removed, and that the DEQ “took actions that were not in the public interest in order to, in my view, help or assist the corporate interests of the companies [the DEQ] regulated, including Dominion.” Former worker: Agency’s OK to use fly ash ‘unconscionable’, Virginian-Pilot, 10/3/10.
3) On March 16, 2011, CDM Engineering released a 600-page study confirming that groundwater under the golf course was contaminated with up to 10 toxic substances, but that the contamination had not reached residences near the course. Study: Groundwater under Chesapeake course tainted, Virginian-Pilot, 3/17/11.