THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Monday, February 10, 1997             TAG: 9702100081
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                      LENGTH:   75 lines

EASTERN STATE HOSPITAL TO STOP SENDING COAL ASH INTO CREEK THE FACILITY IS INSTALLING A GAS PLANT AND HAS AGREED TO CLEAN UP THE WATERWAY.

After years of false starts and delays, the state mental health department has taken steps to stop coal ash from the Eastern State Hospital steam plant from washing into a nearby creek.

The department awarded a contract to a Hampton company to convert the plant to natural gas by Nov. 1. Department officials have also agreed to remove 50 years' worth of layered coal ash a foot thick in places from the creek behind the plant by the spring of 1998.

``Right now, we're in the best position we've been in in a number of years,'' said Robert Shackelford Jr., assistant commissioner for finance and administration.

The plant burns about 4,000 tons of coal a year to make steam for heat, cooking and the laundry on the hospital campus, said John Joyce, the hospital's director of building and grounds.

There was little concern for pollution when the plant was built in 1949. The water and ash left over from the production of steam was simply flushed into the creek, an unnamed tributary of Chisel Run. That was still the case when state environmental officials learned of the plant in 1989.

Eastern State Hospital is one of several state facilities not complying with environmental laws, according to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the General Assembly's investigative arm. In a recent report on the performance of the state Department of Environmental Quality, JLARC cited Eastern State's steam plant to illustrate the state's failure to make its own facilities obey environmental laws.

``I can understand that state agencies have other priorities they have to deal with,'' said JLARC director Phil Leone. ``But some of these have been going on for 20 years.''

Part of the problem is that the state is limited in how it can police its own agencies, JLARC concluded.

If Eastern State Hospital were private, it would probably have been ordered to clean up the plant by a citizen board, the state Water Control Board. If the hospital failed to comply with the order, it could face fines or a lawsuit, as meatpacker Smithfield Foods Inc. does.

Instead, the pollution problems at the hospital are an internal state matter, handled mostly between the mental health department and DEQ. State officials say it makes no sense for one agency to fine another one; state agencies don't have money budgeted for fines, and, besides, it all comes from the same source, the taxpayers. Suing another agency doesn't work either, they say.

``It's kind of difficult to go to court and sue yourself,'' said Mark Miner, spokesman for the attorney general's office, which represents all state agencies in litigation.

In the case of Eastern State, one longtime source of pollution was what's known as ``boiler blowdown'' - warm, rusty excess water from inside the boilers. In 1990, hospital officials estimated that 4,500 gallons of this boiler water went into the creek each day. That water now goes to a Hampton Roads Sanitation District sewage treatment plant, Joyce said.

The second source of pollution was water from the plant's ash collection system. About 6 percent of the coal burned in the plant is left over as ash, and most of that is collected and trucked away, Joyce said. But some ash remains in the steam used to collect it and is flushed untreated into the creek.

The hospital estimated in 1990 that 4,500 gallons of this ash water went into the creek each day. The water is so acidic and contains so many heavy metals that the HRSD refuses to take it unless the hospital pretreats it. The hospital decided not to do that, opting instead to convert the plant to another fuel.

The agreement calls for the creek to be cleaned up by May 1, 1998.

Today, the effect of the ash is easy to see in the black and gray soils along its course.

State regulators determined several years ago that the ash is too heavy to wash downstream into Long Hill Swamp or Powhatan Creek. It has mostly accumulated in the 100 yards or so nearest the steam plant. Most of that area will be dug up and removed.