Posted - July 12, 2008

INDICTED IN BONUSGATE:

Mike VEON	Sean REMALEY	Michael MANZO	Rachel MANZO
Scott BRUBAKER	Jennifer BRUBAKER	Brett COTT	Jeff FOREMAN
Annamarie PERRETTA-ROSEPINK	Stephen KEEFER	Patrick J. LAVELLE	Earl MOSLEY

On Thursday, July 10, 2008, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett announced indictments against suspects in the first phase of an ongoing public corruption investigation. Twelve people connected to the state House Democratic caucus, including a state representative and the former caucus whip, were charged after grand jurors concluded that millions of taxpayer dollars were illegally siphoned from the public treasury to underwrite political campaigns.

Three of those indicted have direct links to two local legislators. Jeff Foreman is chief counsel to House Democratic Majority Whip Keith McCall (D-Carbon County) and Patrick J. Lavelle is a research specialist on McCall's staff. Rachel Manzo, another defendant, is executive director of the House Democratic Policy Committee chaired by Rep. Todd Eachus (D-Luzerne County).

Here is the list of indictments.

Mike Veon

Position: Democratic state representative, Beaver County, 1984-2006; House Minority Whip, 1999-2006;
lobbyist, Veon-Kopp Associates, 2007-April 2008.
Recommended charges: 59 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Sean Ramaley

Position: Democratic state representative, 2005-present; 2008 Democratic state Senate candidate; Veon staffer, July-December 2004.
Recommended charges: 6 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Mike Manzo

Position: House Democratic legislative staffer 1994-2001; chief of staff to House Minority Leader H. William DeWeese, 2001-November 2007. Dismissed, November 2007. Lobbyist, Triad Communications, November 2007-present.
2006 salary: $141,102; 2006 bonus, $20,250
Recommended charges: 47 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Rachel Hurst Manzo

Position: Aide to House Democratic Majority Policy Chairman Todd Eachus; was aide to former state Rep. Frank LaGrotta. Married to Mike Manzo.
2006 salary: $78,000; 2006 bonus, $15,185
Recommended charges: 12 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Brett Cott

Position: Former policy analyst to Veon; reassigned to DeWeese upon Veon's defeat. Dismissed, November 2007.
2006 salary: $87,412; 2006 bonus, $25,065
Recommended charges: 42 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Earl Mosley

Position: Former personnel director for House Democratic Caucus. Dismissed November 2007.
2006 salary: $91,572; 2006 bonus, $7,445
Recommended charges: 16 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Jeff Foreman

Position: Chief counsel to House Majority Whip Keith McCall; previously Veon's chief of staff.
2006 salary: $126,204; 2006 bonus, $14,815
Recommended charges: 24 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Scott Brubaker

Position: Former director of staffing for House Democratic Caucus; dismissed November 2007.
2006 salary: $122,564; 2006 bonus, $15,250.
Recommended charges: 22 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Jennifer Brubaker

Position: Director of the House Democratic Legislative Research Office. Married to Scott Brubaker.
2006 salary: $94,770; 2006 bonus, $17,750
Recommended charges: 17 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Stephen Keefer

Positions: Former director of House Democratic Caucus Office of Information Technology. Fired, November 2007.
2006 salary: $89,414; 2006 bonus, $17,685
Recommended charges: 17 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

Patrick J. LaVelle

Position: House Democratic Caucus research analyst
2006 salary: $70,018; 2006 bonus, $17,656
Recommended charges: 6 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interes.t

Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink

Position: Former district office manager for Veon
2006 salary: $80,185; 2006 bonus, $20,380
Recommended charges: 20 counts theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest.

You can read all the details of the Attorney General's Press Release at www.attorneygeneral.gov

Note well: Attorney General Corbett said he expects more arrests to follow.

Posted - July 20, 2008

The following story appeared in the Kittanning, PA Leader Times. After reading the story, ask yourself the question, what is the PA DEP good for? The answer is absolutely nothing.

By Tom Mitchell
LEADER TIMES
www.pittsburghlive.com
Saturday, July 19, 2008

MANOR -- Their horses won't drink it, and the deer that used to visit a small pond on the farm of Merinda and Joe Wills now quench their thirst somewhere else. All the fish have died.

The Wills want to know what the oily substance is that turns their pond water orange and deposits a white scum on the edges every time it rains. Merinda Wills said she has contacted the Department of Environmental Protection, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and the Armstrong County Conservation District, all to no avail.

They have also contacted the Manor Township Supervisors, because the Wills contend the pollution is coming from the area of the township shed. Merinda Wills said she believes that more than a decade ago a number of barrels containing a liquid substance were transported from the former PPG plant in Ford City to the township shed and stored there. She thinks that as some of the barrels deteriorated, the substance leeched into the ground and began polluting a small run, Graff Run Creek, that feeds directly into their pond.

"In May of 2006, my husband told me that our pond had turned orange and that their was an oily substance on the surface and a whitish foam around the edges." Merinda Wills said. "This occurred just after a heavy rain. Before that the pond was clean and clear. We stocked fish in it for catch-and-release fishing. We had bass, a few catfish and some trout. Most of the fish died. The ones that did survive turned all black and had a white, stringy substance coming out of their eyes. Now they're dead too.

"Our pony was near the pond, but we noticed that it refused to drink the water. We had always observed some deer come down for a drink, but one day I noticed a doe and her fawn come out of the woods just after a rain. They came up to the edge of the pond, sniffed the water and turned around and ran off."

The Wills are not only concerned for their own safety, but for the safety of others. Merinda Wills said the pond drains into Fort Run Creek and from there into the Allegheny River.

"We really don't know what this stuff is," she said. "No one, including the DEP, has been able to tell us. But one thing I know is that this eventually drains into the Allegheny, and I wouldn't want to live downstream and get my drinking water from the river knowing this stuff is in it."

Merinda Wills said a DEP official suggested that the pollution was acid mind drainage and not coming from township property. She said she checked with all the mining companies in the county, and no mining operations were ongoing in the area. She added that she could not find any records of previous mining operations.

No one from the state Fish and Boat Commission nor DEP could be reached for comment. However, Dave Rupert of the Armstrong County Conservation District said that there are old abandoned deep mines in that watershed area. Rupert said he believed the mines were shut down before the turn of the last century.

"Beyond the township shed, there are some fields," Rupert said. "They were once a site for bio-solid waste materials, in other words, sewage solids. The site has a long history of noncompliance with DEP. The owner shut down operation maybe 10 or 15 years ago and declared bankruptcy. On this site was an old mining bore hole. There may have been improper or illegal disposal of materials discharged into the bore hole.

"Our department does not have the expertise to analyze hazardous waste materials, therefore we referred Mrs. Wills to the proper DEP officials."

Merinda Wills said a DEP official, Fred Brant, and a representative of the Fish and Boat Commission visited the site to look at the pond. They also examined a drain pipe coming out of township property where the barrels had allegedly been stored.

Wills said they told her they didn't know what the orange substance was but suggested that the problem should clear up with time.

The Wills feel that time is not on their side. They have secured an attorney and are planning to file suit against Manor Township. Wills said tthe barrels to which she referred were removed from the site a number of years ago, but not before some of them leaked their contents into the ground.

Manor Township officials declined to comment on the matter due to pending litigation.

"We would just like to know what the problem is," Merinda Wills said. "No one can tell us what it is. We just want it cleaned up."

Tom Mitchell can be reached at 724-543-1303, ext. 220.

Posted - July 24, 2008

Rep. David "Borrow and Spend" Argall with
Gov. Ed "Borrow and Spend" Rendell

On July 19th, State Representative David Argall published a letter about Pennsylvania’s 2008-2009 budget www.tnonline.com. In his letter, Mr. Argall started by stating, "Pennsylvania has a new state budget and it includes no new taxes or fees. And, that’s just the beginning of the good news for taxpayers."

Mr. Argall failed to mention that he actually voted to increase spending by $1.4 billion and for $2.85 billion in new borrowing thereby burdening the taxpayers of tomorrow with higher costs so the legislators would have more money to spend today.

About the 2008-2009 General Fund budget, Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation said, "the overall budget deal falls short of putting Pennsylvania back on the road to fiscal health and economic prosperity."

Mr. Argall went on, "In addition, lawmakers were able to secure a key concession that will secure the long-term fiscal stability of our Commonwealth. The Rendell administration had proposed spending part of the state’s reserve account – also known as the ‘Rainy Day Fund’ – to pay for programs and services in this year’s budget. This would be equivalent to a family paying for basic expenditures – such as food and rent – by dipping into their savings account."

Mr. Argall failed to mention that with the 2008-2009 budget, state leaders are actually burdening the taxpayers of tomorrow with higher costs so that they have more money to spend today. Rep. Kathy Rapp (R-Warren) stated, "First and foremost, I voted against this year’s budget because it is long past time, for both the governor and the General Assembly to stop mortgaging Pennsylvania’s future through fiscally irresponsible taxation, spending and borrowing." Rep. Rapp added, "Borrowing against our future is not reform, but a reckless acceleration of business-as-usual at the State Capitol.. ."

Mr. Argall continued, "Finally, lawmakers understood that families across our Commonwealth are having to ‘tighten their financial belts’ to make ends meet. We believed it was only fair for state government to do the same. That is why this year’s state budget includes a $2.5 million cut in House expenditures and a $1.3 million cut in Senate expenditures."

Oh really! What Mr. Argall failed to mention is that the budget signed into law by Gov. Rendell reportedly spends $360 million in hidden Walking Around Money (WAMs) for the House and Senate members!

Mr. Argall concluded his letter with a statement that, "It’s time to work together to find a way to completely eliminate school property taxes."

What Mr. Argall failed to mention is that the 2008-2009 budget diverts over $1 billion in gambling revenue, which was supposed to be used for local property tax relief for homeowners. $800 million will go to the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia and $225 will be spent on a new arena for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Finally, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that top legislators said that if the economy continues to slide as predicted, Pennsylvania this time next year could be facing a gaping budget deficit a billion dollars wide that could force a tax increase.

Contrary to Mr. Argall’s assertion, the 2008-2009 "borrow and spend" budget is anything but good news for taxpayers.

Posted - July 30, 2008

The following article by Robert McCabe appeared in The Virginian-Pilot on July 27, 2008. The article summarizes the nationwide problems with fly ash contamination with emphasis on the Virginia experience. Please note that the Fly Ash Regulatory Timeline at the end of the story acknowledges that an EPA report cites 67 cases nationwide of proven or potential damage to ground or surface water because of coal-combustion waste or fly ash. In spite of the EPA report, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental continues to deny that there have been any cases of damage to ground or surface water in Pennsylvania because of fly ash dumping.

As fly ash piles up, the challenge for safe disposal rises

Fly ash is a superfine, powdery byproduct of burning coal for electricity. It can contain heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury, which pose risks to the environment. (Bill Tiernan | The Virginian-Pilot)


FLY ASH REGULATORY TIMELINE

1980

Congress passes an amendment temporarily exempting fly ash and coal-combustion waste from classification as hazardous waste, pending more EPA study.

1988

The EPA makes its report on fly ash to Congress, roughly six years after the deadline and only deals with part of the issue.

The EPA misses its deadline for issuing a "determination" on fly ash and whether it is hazardous.

1995

The DEQ, which had been established two years earlier, adopts a new set of regulations expanding beneficial use of fly ash to include projects in open-space settings, such as Battlefield Golf Club.

The new rules join provisions already in place in state law that allow fly ash under pavement and buildings.

2000

The EPA makes a second "determination," following another in 1993, that fly ash and other coal-combustion waste do not warrant classification as hazardous waste.

2004

The EPA holds four public meetings between March and May on the disposal of fly ash.

The agency is concerned about coal-combustion byproducts because of the potential for environmental damage, lack of groundwater protection and widely varying state regulatory programs.

2007

An EPA report cites 67 cases nationwide of proven or potential damage to ground or surface water because of coal-combustion waste.

The EPA releases a draft risk assessment that finds that for people on wells, arsenic from unlined units poses a dramatically higher risk of cancer.

An EPA presentation states that the standard test for predicting leaching of metals – as used by Dominion Virginia Power – is not adequate.

Published on HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com (http://hamptonroads.com)

By Robert McCabe
The Virginian-Pilot
July 27, 2008

Coal provides more than half of the nation's electricity and will continue to be the fuel of choice for generating power. In raw terms, it makes sense: The United States sits on a quarter of the world's coal reserves, making it a cheap and abundant energy source.

But as demand mounts, so do the byproducts from burning coal. Millions of tons of "fly ash" - a powdery substance laced with heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead - have piled up in landfills. For power companies, those are costly disposal options, because the fly ash placed there must be treated as a potentially toxic industrial waste.

Coal-power producers and environmental regulators formed a partnership, trying to figure out a cheap and safe way to dispose of the residue.

They shaped a mishmash of rules that vary from state to state, with no federal oversight. They encourage the recycling of fly ash through "beneficial uses," ranging from concrete block and wallboard manufacturing to a variety of in-ground, structural fill uses that include such local projects as Norfolk's Harbor Park baseball stadium and embankments on parts of the Chesapeake Expressway and the Southwest Suffolk Bypass.

Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville, a course in Chesapeake built with 1.5 million tons of fly ash, is the biggest of them all - one of the largest ash reuse projects of its kind in the nation.

City officials began testing water at the site and the homes of nearby residences after The Virginian-Pilot reported March 30 that the soil cap on top of the fly ash had eroded in places and that a series of man-made "lakes" on the course lacked liners that could prevent the leaching of any contaminants. The Pilot also reported that while groundwater-monitoring wells were not required for the course, they were at Dominion Virginia Power's Chesapeake Energy Center, which supplied the fly ash for the project. Construction of the course began in 2002; it opened in fall 2007.

Test results disclosed July 17 confirmed the fears of nearby residents, prompting city officials to request help from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Arsenic levels are more than eight times and lead levels more than five times the municipal drinking water standards. Aluminum, one of the other contaminants, exceeds drinking water standards by 500 times.

The site is now on the radar of the EPA's Superfund program and exemplifies a little-known, but growing, problem: how to deal with a mountain of ash generated by the nation's roughly 440 coal-fired power plants.

Fly ash used to sculpt the 18-hole golf course sits on wet soil and over aquifers that supply drinking water to roughly 200 wells within a radius of about a half-mile. Elevated levels of arsenic have been cited in on-site monitoring wells at Dominion's state-regulated fly-ash landfill in Chesapeake.

Buzz about the use of fly ash in Chesapeake and elsewhere reached Washington and Richmond in late spring.

Congress, Virginia regulators, industry officials and environmental experts met to weigh whether rules governing fly-ash disposal are adequate.

A key question facing regulators is whether "beneficial uses" of fly ash in cases such as the Chesapeake golf course - involving massive amounts of the material spread over land, near groundwater - should face more scrutiny.

"The current approaches to evaluating risks are very limited, and they may underestimate the true risks," Dr. Thomas Burke, a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, told a congressional panel in June.

The foundation for the "beneficial use" provisions of coal-ash regulations was laid in 1980. That's when Congress temporarily exempted coal-combustion byproducts from classification as hazardous waste pending further study by the EPA.

What this meant, effectively, was that coal-ash products would be subject to state - not federal - regulation.

With nearly 20 major coal-fired power plants in Virginia, the disposal of coal ash had become a problem. It was dumped in pits, old mines or landfills. In York County, fly ash placed in abandoned sand and gravel mines between 1957 and 1974 polluted groundwater, and the dump site later gained Superfund status.

"Water in adjacent residential wells actually turned green," according to a recent National Research Council study requested by Congress. The site since has been cleaned up.

Nationwide, as regulators began to recognize the air-pollution threat from burning coal, emissions standards required that fly ash be captured and stockpiled on the ground. This, however, intensified the threat to groundwater.

Landfill controls eventually became stricter, requiring protective liners, well monitoring and other safeguards to contain a growing amount of fly ash. Power and coal companies teamed with construction businesses to find creative ways to reuse the material. Virginia embraced the notion, so much so that its governor appointed a coal-ash industry leader to head the state's newly formed Department of Environmental Quality.

The new hire was Peter W. Schmidt. While a graduate student and assistant football coach at the University of Virginia in the 1970s, he had become friends with George Allen, a transfer student from UCLA.

Not long after being elected governor of Virginia in 1993, Allen tapped Schmidt to head the fledgling DEQ.

Schmidt was an executive with Agglite Corp., which had an operation on the grounds of Dominion's coal-fired power plant in the city. The company used fly ash generated at Dominion's operation, where it was mixed with cement. Agglite aggressively pursued using fly ash in place of dirt for fill projects. In the early 1990s, before Schmidt's stint at the DEQ, he met with Virginia regulators and successfully pushed for changes in the state's solid-waste regulations that would allow beneficial uses of fly ash in construction projects.

Early in 1995, roughly midway through Schmidt's time at the DEQ, an additional set of regulations was adopted that expanded beneficial-use provisions for fly ash. Schmidt said those regulations were "already in play" when he arrived at the department the year before. It was under those regulations that the Chesapeake golf course project eventually moved forward. Before and after his term as DEQ director - which lasted from June 1994 to June 1996 - Schmidt's businesses were involved in an array of beneficial-use fly-ash projects in Hampton Roads, including Harbor Park, Tidewater Community College's Virginia Beach campus, Portsmouth Naval Hospital, a stretch of Providence Road in Chesapeake and DEQ's offices in Virginia Beach.

For almost 30 years, Schmidt has been affiliated with a constellation of concrete companies based in Charlottesville, with local offices at Money Point in the South Norfolk section of Chesapeake. He recalled his term as DEQ chief as "an enormously contentious time," during which he was labeled a "fox in the chicken house" and pilloried by the media and the heavily Democratic General Assembly.

He said he saw his job then as a managerial challenge, pulling together a handful of previously free-standing state agencies into a unified DEQ.

Schmidt denies there was ever any conflict between his role at the department and his fly-ash-related business ventures before and after his term.

"For someone to imply that I used my position in an inappropriate manner is completely false and inaccurate," he said.

For decades, Washington has sent mixed signals regarding the environmental risks posed by fly ash. The EPA missed deadlines to report to Congress and issue a ruling on fly ash in the 1980s. Later, it twice determined - in 1993 and 2000 - that fly ash and related coal-combustion byproducts should not be regulated as hazardous waste. But it made clear that fly ash was subject to landfilling requirements and couldn't be disposed of freely; the EPA also committed to developing federal regulations for states regarding fly-ash disposal.

The agency has been consistent in one way: It never has stopped telling the public that it is studying fly ash's potential risks to the environment and human health.

In 2004, the EPA held a series of meetings "to learn more about the use and disposal of coal-combustion byproducts," according to a regulatory timeline posted at www.epa.gov/epaoswer/other/fossil/regs.htm.

"The Agency remains concerned about coal combustion byproducts because of the potential for environmental damage, the lack of groundwater protection via monitoring and/or liners, and widely varying state regulatory programs," according to a note on the EPA's Web page.

Those concerns have heated up as news of the prolific use of fly ash and water contamination has circulated nationally.

At the House subcommittee hearing last month on fly-ash disposal rules, a former EPA attorney cited the Chesapeake golf course as another example of why a federal regulatory baseline needs to be established.

"With no minimum federal standards, the states have been free to regulate as they please, or more often, abstain from effective regulation altogether," said Lisa Evans, now with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, in written statements submitted to the panel.

"If one compares how EPA regulates the disposal of ordinary household trash with its hands-off approach to (coal-combustion waste), the results defy logic."

At the same hearing, the head of the American Coal Ash Association, a Colorado-based trade group, said the current system is working just fine.

"It is our opinion that most states want to continue their role in the oversight of management, recycling and beneficial uses" of coal-ash products, said David Goss, the group's executive director, in a written statement.

Others at the hearing, however, particularly those from Maryland, pushed for a minimum set of nationwide safeguards. Last year, state regulators imposed a $1 million fine on a Baltimore-area utility and the local owner of a dump site after contamination in at least 34 wells in Gambrills, Md., was linked to fly ash.

"I really hear a need for some kind of federal baseline, because I think that federal regulations of some kind have the effect of saying, 'Stop, look, listen,' before you go to dispose of this kind of waste," said Maryland Rep. John Sarbanes, whose district includes Gambrills.

"This is a classic instance in which later we'll look back and we'll say, 'You know, we had all the warning signs to put some kind of regime in place and we didn't take advantage of it.' "

The effects of the uncontrolled use of fly ash on air and groundwater are well-documented. Cases involving fly-ash contamination of groundwater have been cited in Indiana, Maryland, Montana, Wisconsin and Virginia.

Always a wild card is the level of risk in a particular setting, because the constituents in fly ash can vary widely and so can soil conditions, hydrology and other environmental factors.

Every fly-ash disposal site presents a unique puzzle.

To see one coal-waste site is not to see them all, but only the one you're looking at, Burke, the Johns Hopkins professor, told the recent congressional panel. "You need to have the tools to be able to evaluate them," he said.

The Battlefield Golf Club at Centerville was sculpted from fly ash that Dominion Virginia Power paid to have trucked from its Chesapeake Energy Center.

People with direct knowledge of the deal said that a Dominion subcontractor paid the original developers an initial fee of about $4.50 per ton for the fly ash to be placed on the golf course. At that rate, the deal would have cost the utility nearly $7 million.

A toxicity test, widely accepted by regulators nationwide, was conducted by Dominion's lab in 2001 and used to convince environmental officials and the public that the project was safe. However, the EPA has acknowledged the test used was designed to assess the leaching risk of contaminants from "garbage juice" in municipal solid-waste landfills - not heavy metals from fly ash.

The results from another leaching test recently requested by the city and reviewed by a fly-ash chemist and expert arrived at a very different set of conclusions.

"It is his opinion that levels of constituents of concern are high," wrote City Manager William E. Harrell, in a July 16 letter to the EPA. "Further, high levels of vanadium were detected in the groundwater recovered from the monitoring wells. It is the opinion of our fly ash expert that vanadium is an element associated with and found in fly ash."

The levels of other contaminants - arsenic, lead, manganese and chromium - also were high, exceeding municipal drinking water standards. The question for regulators and residents now is whether these contaminants have infected their water supplies or eventually will.

Virginia regulators, prompted in part by what has occurred in Chesapeake, now are looking at the adequacy of the tools used to assess the safety of fly-ash projects and whether changes are necessary. The 217-acre golf course is among the largest known fly-ash projects in the state of Virginia - bigger than Dominion's regulated fly-ash landfill in Deep Creek, which has about 1.1 million tons of ash. Yet it was built under a relaxed set of rules that exempts projects from DEQ permitting requirements because it met the tests for beneficial-use status.

The developers of the golf course and Dominion say the ash placed there was mixed with a binding agent, either cement kiln dust or lime kiln dust, that prevents leaching. Some environmental experts countered that cement kiln dust is an industrial waste and that the existence of unlined lakes on the course and questions about the location of the water table means all bets are off.

Dominion Virginia Power officials said the utility conducted extensive environmental testing before moving ahead with the project seven years ago but on the advice of its attorneys has declined to release any of the findings.

Dominion's Chesapeake plant no longer has a need to landfill the fly ash it generates. An on-site vendor further processes virtually all of the fly ash and markets it to regional companies that use it to make concrete products.

This year, the company has won two environmental awards, one from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and another from the EPA.

The Chesapeake City Council unanimously approved the Battlefield Golf Club project in June 2001 and, in April, after a story in The Pilot about the golf course, the city offered tap-water testing to more than 75 homeowners who use wells and live near it.

Those tests showed no sign of contamination but detected boron, a possible marker for fly-ash contamination.

After the recent discovery of contaminants in the shallow aquifer under the course, the city began retesting the tap water at nearly 30 homes downstream from the golf course.

Though the environmental risks posed by fly ash have been known for years, the golf-course developers were required only to "notify" the state of their plans and to verify certain items.

They did that in March 2002.

Among other things, certifications had to be submitted showing that the developers had legal control of the property, that the project met all city ordinances and that certain "locational restrictions" would be met, including a 2-foot vertical separation between any fly ash and the "maximum seasonal water table," though the regulations do not specifically define what that means.

The DEQ had 30 days to review the papers and get back to the developers. The department was not required to - and did not - double-check the information provided.

"There is no technical review," said Milt Johnston, of the DEQ's Tidewater office.

Johnston said that, technically, the state environmental agency did not approve the golf course.

In a recent in-house e-mail directive, DEQ officials were instructed to avoid using terms such as "approval" in relation to coal-combustion byproduct projects.

"The wording has been changed to 'acknowledged' or 'deemed' to be consistent with the regulations," wrote Jason E. Williams, the DEQ's solid-waste permit coordinator, in a May 29 e-mail to department staff.

The golf course is one of 14 projects in Virginia to be built under state rules adopted in early 1995. No such project has yet been denied by the state.

Together, the sites account for about 5 million tons of ash.

More than a quarter of it is under the golf course in Chesapeake.

That is only a fraction of the fly ash used elsewhere across the state, under another set of state regulations.

The DEQ does not track those uses.

Robert McCabe, (757) 222-5217, robert.mccabe@pilotonline.com