Are you tired of hearing about coal ash yet? Is it harmful, is it in groundwater or not, is it going to be excavated, are the states protecting its citizens, and how much is it really going to cost are all common coal ash discussion points. Who could blame you if you are tired of the uncertainty.

Despite being in an argumentative state, regulatory uncertainty, and political flexing for over 15 years now, the industry will enter the fixing phase. There will be a paradigm shift for all stakeholders as “things” get decided and the cornerstone method of decision making could lead the way.

What is the cornerstone method of decision making? Completing that one important decision and then driving all decisions from the results of that one important decision. This is very similar to the construction process of setting the cornerstone of a new building and then constructing everything from that stone.
Most of the coal power plants that have an abundance of coal ash at their facilities are fast approaching a “cornerstone decision” of excavating all the ash to mitigate their environmental liability.
From this decision facilities can naturally shift from uncertainty phase to the solution selection phase and then finally the execution phase.

There is too, too much coal ash that needs to be excavated. Therefore, it is all about STORAGE.
Beneficiation has provided some relief to this conundrum. Nevertheless, beneficiation timeframes greatly extend beyond desired regulatory and environmental protection timeframes. Also, these beneficiation plants require a lot of capital to build, so raw feed storage to extend the plant lifetime to 30 to 35 years still takes center-stage.

Another form of relief to this storage problem is the use of Encapsulated Mechanically Stabilized Earthen (eMSE) Structures. Coal ash is used as a construction backfill material (on-site or off-site). eMSE Structures uses a method called “macroencapsulation”, which on a macro level, coal ash is FULLY encapsulated and rendered inert within a structure.

Here at EnCAP-IT we specialize in solutions that maximize the use of space; always by making the most of every single acre, yard, or foot of available land for storage. Our safeBERM®, safeSTORAGE® and VertiCell™ patented, green solutions can use coal ash (other materials also) as fill in a protective, efficient, and economic manner. With EnCAP-IT the answer to the common question “Can we safety store all of your excavated ash on-site?”, is “yes we can”.

The safeBERM®, safeSTORAGE®, and VertiCell™ systems allows for situational fluency and resolving known and unknown issues with Progressive Filling and Progressive Capping.