Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, July 26, 1994                 TAG: 9407260309
SECTION: LOCAL                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY JOE TAYLOR, ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: NORFOLK                            LENGTH: Medium:   87 lines

ASH FROM COAL MAY HELP IMPROVE HABITATS OF OYSTERS AN EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT USES THE BYPRODUCT AND CEMENT TO TRY TO CREATE SHELLFISH REEFS.

   Virginia's once-thriving oyster grounds may get some new life from another 
below-the-surface element - not in water, but deep inside mountains where coal
is mined.
   Scientists are turning coal fly ash, a byproduct of burning the underground
fuel to make electricity, into places for oysters to live.
   The project is under study by two state universities with the help of 
Virginia Power, the state's largest utility and a major coal consumer.
   ``The idea is to use coal fly ash, mixed with a small amount of cement, to 
produce golf ball-sized pellets and create a habitat for oysters,'' said R. 
Michael Ewing, associate director of the Applied Marine Research Laboratory of
Old Dominion University.
   ``I wouldn't say it can save the industry,'' said Mark Luckenbach, an 
associate professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, a branch of 
the College of William and Mary. ``But I see these materials as fitting nicely
into the broader-scale plan to rehabilitate oyster reef habitats.''
   By all accounts, the Virginia oyster is in bad shape. The harvest of 
market-sized oysters dropped from about 3.5 million bushels in the mid-1950s 
to under 50,000 and falling in recent years.
   Thirty years ago, hundreds of watermen worked the James River, the 
Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Now, the number is a handful, and experts 
say the Bay is virtually empty of oysters.
   Marine scientists and watermen can't agree whether the chief cause for the 
decline is disease, pollution or excess harvests. Whatever the reason, the 
oyster's demise also has meant reduced oyster grounds, since shells taken from
packing houses were the traditional building material for new habitat.
   ``We have a severe shortage of oyster shells in this state,'' Ewing said. 
``We've been buying it from Maryland, but they're not going to sell us oyster 
shells any more because they have a shortage, too. They have oyster beds that 
need to be replenished.''
   The solution: coal fly ash. The idea came from a test project using the ash
in Texas' Galveston Bay, Luckenbach said. There, Houston Lighting & Power Co. 
provided the ash, which was studied by Texas A&M researchers.
   The tests found no pollution problems from the ash, and it has become a 
source of new oyster reefs. ``In three years in increasing scale, I would say 
they're having tremendous success using this material,'' Luckenbach said.
   Since March, Ewing has conducted chemical tests on fly ash from Virginia 
Power's Chesapeake Energy Center. As with the Texas ash, no pollution worries 
have arisen.
   ``Coal fly ash has a variety of trace elements,'' Ewing said. ``But 
comparing concentrations in fly ash to what you'd find in nature, it's very 
difficult to tell whether this would be any different from what you'd find in 
soil.''
   This week, Luckenbach plans to lower some fl said Jim 
Wesson, the VMRC's top oyster expert. ``It could potentially turn out to be 
very valuable.''  
   Bill Byrd, a Virginia Power spokesman, said the Environmental Protection 
Agency evaluated the ash for a decade and finally concluded that it was not a 
hazardous waste. The utility is providing the ash free for the experiment. The
Chesapeake facility - a 595-megawatt station on the Elizabeth River's Southern
Branch - produces up to 175,000 tons each year, Byrd said. The oyster project 
will need only a fraction of that.  
   Most fly ash is recycled for construction uses. For example, Byrd said, ash
from Chesapeake was used in building the parking lot at Harbor Park in 
Norfolk, a baseball stadium completed last year for the Norfolk Tides.