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Some top-ranking North Carolina officials are pushing back against the U.S. EPA plans to regulate coal ash.

Coal ash is the stuff left over after you burn coal to produce power. It can come in wet and dry forms and started getting attention after a TVA coal ash dam burst and fouled waterways and water supplies back in late 2008. Coal ash is problematic because it contains toxic substances such as arsenic and selenium, none of which plays well with human biology.

Since the TVA spill, North Carolina has been looking at coal ash facilities around the state. A recent Charlotte Observer story (click here) spotlighted water contamination problems around coal ash storage facilities. There are links to more background in this post.

EPA was originally due to issue regulations by the end of 2009 but those regulations are expected to come in the next two months, according EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson as quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

"Staff were looking at a potential proposal out by April and we're certainly working towards that date," Jackson told the Journal. Click here for that story. (An earlier story - click here - talks about internatal administration differences over coal ash regulation.)

At least one of the options under consideration is to designate coal ash as hazardous waste.

The problem is this: Coal ash is used in a variety of things that people find useful. Two of the most prevalent applications are wall board and concrete. The ash apparently helps makes both products stronger. If you’ve driven on a road in North Carolina today, chances are you’ve driven on concrete produced with fly ash.

Among the questions on the environmental side of the equation is what happens when that concrete breaks down or does the concrete even need to break down for any toxics in the coal ash to leach out into the environment. (We’ll leave aside applications where ash is straight up dumped into the ground to help with landscaping.)

Last summer, Perdue aggressively jumped on the need to regulate coal ash ponds, calling for and signing a bill to enhance regulation. (Click here and here.)

But state officials are now weighing in on the side of continuing “beneficial uses.” Rep. Pricey Harrison passed on three letters from state officials to the EPA asking the agency to back off designating coal ash as a hazardous material. (For her part, Harrison would like to see coal ash regulated.)

“The potential designation of fly ash as a hazardous waste, even if limited for the purpose of its disposal, will likely result in a negative impact on both the quality and cost of concrete used by the Department,” wrote NC Sec. of Transportation Gene Conti. “The negative public perception of allowing a hazardous material within our right-of-way will likely force us to cease using fly ash, and result in more costly and potentially lower quality concrete being used.”

Click here for Conti’s letter.

Keith Crisco, North Carolina’s Sec. of Commerce, also has written the EPA asking that the agency not regulate coal ash as a hazardous material.

“North Carolina has been a leader in requiring our electric utilities to install state of the art emission controls for sulfur dioxide. The calcium sulfate that is generated as the air emissions are ‘scrubbed’ is now being used at a newly operational wallboard facility that represents a substantial investment in jobs and taxes that are crucial as our unemployment figures are among the highest in the country,” Crisco wrote.

Click here for Crisco’s letter.

Robert Gruber has also weighed in against a hazardous designation. Gruber is the director of the Public Staff of the N.C. Utilities Commission, the group charged with looking out for the interest of everyday people in cases before state utility regulators.

“Notwithstanding the views of the States, we are concerned that the EPA will nonetheless regulate CCBs as hazardous waste and that, as a result, the utilities in our State will be confronted with sharply higher operating costs which will be passed on to rate payers in the form of higher electric rates,” Gruber writes.

Click here for Gruber’s letter.

And there, essentially, is the argument in a nut shell: concerns about costs and jobs pushing back against concerns about environmental impact.

A lot of people are looking to see how the EPA resolves this push-me-pull-you situation.