THE U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has imposed a new standard on the coal industry in six Appalachian states, including West Virginia, for water quality around mine sites.
Specifically, the EPA has chosen a single test parameter known as “specific conductivity” to gauge the acceptability of a discharge.
As president of Standard Labs, a 60-year old West Virginia-based coal and environmental testing firm with 29 laboratories across the United States, I believe this threshold is arbitrary, simplistic, scientifically flawed, and unobtainable by most industrial processes.
EPA has established a conductivity threshold of 300 microSiemens per centimeter (uS/cm). Mine-site-related discharges with conductivity levels under 300 will be acceptable, while levels over 300 will not.
Conductivity is a measure of a solution’s ability to conduct an electrical current. Conductivity is normally proportional to its ion concentration, so the higher a solution’s ion concentration, the higher the conductivity result.
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