AES Indiana presents updated corrective measures assessment for Harding Street ash ponds; opens 30-day comment period

AES Indiana on Tuesday presented an updated corrective measures assessment for the Harding Street generating station ash pond system and opened a 30-day public comment period on the report and proposed remedies.

Brandy Davis Handy, president of AES Indiana, introduced the presentation and said the company was committed to transparency as it works through corrective measures for coal combustion residuals (CCR) at the Harding Street facility. "Safety is our number 1 value at AES Indiana," Handy said.

The presentation, led by Pilar Cuadra, environmental manager, and Steve Petrich, the engineer of record, summarized a multi‑year groundwater monitoring program and a site‑specific risk evaluation conducted under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) CCR rule. Cuadra described CCR as the byproduct of burning coal and said federal CCR requirements—first issued in 2015 and supplemented by a legacy CCR rule in 2024—call for groundwater monitoring, closure of CCR units, and public posting of compliance data.

Petrich said AES began compliance monitoring at Harding Street in February 2016 and expanded the network during a nature‑and‑extent investigation. AES now monitors roughly 80 wells at 23 locations around the former pond footprint. Petrich said three constituents—arsenic, lithium and molybdenum—were identified at statistically significant levels above groundwater protection standards and that the impacted groundwater…