By Richard Martin, Contributing Editor
 
Last week another decision by the Obama Administration in favor of secrecy in a matter of public concern was made public. This time it had to do not with torture photos but with coal ash.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., California Sen. Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairperson of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Homeland Security have determined to keep secret  the locations of 44 disposal sites deemed at risk of disasters on the scale of the spill that decimated a Tennessee community late last year. In the wake of the December accident at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a coal-fired generating station near Knoxville, Tenn., which spilled hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic sludge  into the surrounding community, the EPA compiled a list of disposal sites that constitute a “high hazard” if they fail. Among other things, that means that people could be killed in the event of an accident. The EPA had planned to make the list public, the A.P. reported on June 13, until receiving a letter from Corps of Engineers director of civil works Steven L. Stockton that said, “Uncontrolled or unrestricted release [of the list] may pose a security risk to projects or communities by increasing its attractiveness as a potential target.”

A target, that is, for terrorists. The Dept. of Homeland Security has also protested against making the information public.

As it happens I was driving by the Kingston Plant, in Tennessee, the day the A.P. story was published. Six months after the accident, the coal plant is still shut down. Front-loaders and bulldozers crawled across a gray and black moonscape of ash, making little apparent progress in cleaning the stuff up.

The absurdity coalof the Corps and DHS reasoning becomes apparent when you consider that, first of all, figuring out where coal ash is stored is as easy as figuring out where lots of coal is burned: virtually all ash disposal sites are, naturally, right next to big -fired plants. As I reported in February, the Center for Public Integrity  has produced a study showing the major sites where millions of tons of coal ash is stored in ponds, landfills, and mine pits across the country. Colorado leads the states of the West with more than 3.1 million tons of ash; Wyoming and Utah also have significant amounts of the toxic waste.

What’s more, the risk of not publicizing the high-hazard sites is surely greater than the risk that some terrorist will use it to stage a major calamity. It’s like having a half-ton of radioactive nuclear waste buried in your back yard – but the authorities won’t tell you exactly where, because an evildoer might come along to dig it up and threaten the neighborhood with it.

“If these sites are so hazardous, and if the neighborhoods nearby could be harmed irreparably, then I believe it is essential to let people know,” Boxer told reporters.

That much is obvious. What’s less clear is at what level this cloak of secrecy was approved – and whether it will remain official policy. The EPA has pushed more stringent regulations, and public disclosure, for coal ash sites in the past, only to be stymied by the utilities and the coal industry’s powerful lobbyists. Now, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is saying the agency will once again propose new regulations this year – including potentially reclassifying the byproducts from burning coal as hazardous waste, which should have been done a long time ago.

President Obama promised to bring a new level of transparency to the federal government. This is a good place to start.