Coal Combustion Products Partnership

The Coal Combustion Products Partnership (C2P2) program was a cooperative effort between the U.S. EPA, the American Coal Ash Association, the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Federal Highway Administration and the Electric Power Research Institute to "help promote the beneficial use of Coal Combustion Products (CCPs) and the environmental benefits that result from their use."

According to an EPA brochure on the program: "The C2P2 program was designed to help meet the national waste reduction goals of the Resource Conservation Challenge—a U.S. EPA effort to find flexible, yet more protective, ways to conserve valuable natural resources through waste reduction, energy recovery and recycling. Through the C2P2 program, the U.S. EPA and its co-sponsors work with all levels of government, as well as industry organizations, to reduce or eliminate legal, institutional, economic, market, informational and other barriers to the beneficial use of CCPs. Specifically, C2P2 aims for the following goals: Reduce adverse effects on air and land by increasing the use of coal combustion products to 50 percent in 2011 from 31 percent in 2001. Increase the use of CCPs as a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) in concrete by 50 percent, from 12.4 million tons in 2001 to 18.6 million tons in 2011, thereby decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from avoided cement manufacturing by approximately five million tons."

Program suspended
On March 23, 2011, the EPA inspector general released a report stating that the federal government had promoted some uses of coal ash, including wallboard or filler in road embankments, without properly testing the environmental risks. The report said wallboard "may represent a large universe of inappropriate disposal applications with unknown potential for adverse environmental and human health impacts." Coal ash recyclers and manufacturers that use it have argued that tougher federal regulations would place a stigma on the substance and hinder efforts to reuse some of the 130 million tons produced at U.S. coal-fired power plants each year. The C2P2 program was started in 2001 and halted in 2010.

American Coal Ash Association
ACAA is an umbrella lobbying group for all coal ash interests that includes major coal burners Duke Energy, Southern Company and American Electric Power as well as dozens of other companies. The group argues that the so-called "beneficial-use industry" would be eliminated if a "hazardous" designation was given for coal ash waste. ACAA set up a front group called Citizens for Recycling First, which argues that using toxic coal ash as fill in other products is safe.

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