U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials are opposing a proposed wetlands-destruction permit for the Louisville Gas and Electric coal-burning waste landfill planned for Trimble County in Kentucky.
The opposition to the permit throws another hurdle in front of the power company’s plans to store nearly 1 million tons of ash and scrubber waste at its Trimble Generating Station along the Ohio River northeast of Louisville.
LG&E still faces earlier concerns about a cave on its property that the Kentucky Division of Waste Management has said should be protected under a 1988 cave-protection law.
A recent letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Louisville from EPA officials in Atlanta said the landfill would damage as much as 10 miles of streams, 1.1 acres of wetlands and .27 acres of ponds within the watershed.
“Information available to the EPA suggests that the aquatic resources proposed to be impacted as a result of this project may be among the highest quality headwaters stream resources in this region of the Commonwealth,” according to the letter.
