Big Bend Station has 52 groundwater monitoring wells, 49 of which have been polluted above federal advisory levels based on samples collected between February 03, 2010 and September 17, 2019. Groundwater at this site contains unsafe levels of boron, sulfate, arsenic, manganese, radium, molybdenum, fluoride, nitrate, beryllium, thallium and antimony.
Site descriptionBig Bend Station is an 1,823-MW facility in Apollo Beach, Florida in Hillsborough County. The facility first became operational in 1970. Big Bend Unit 2 is set to retire in 2021 and Big Bend Unit 1 is planned to be repowered as a natural gas-fired combined-cycle unit by 2023. Tampa Electric Company operates a network of 11 coal ash impoundments and one landfill to accommodate ash and flue gas desulfurization (FGD) waste produced at Big Bend Energy Station. Most of these impoundments are unlined. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued a consent order in 2001 citing contamination of ground and surface waters, including arsenic levels 11 times greater than the drinking water standard. Data collected almost ten years later (in October 2010) show that many monitoring wells still exceed health-based standards for arsenic. The Big Bend Economizer Ash and Pyrite Pond System is regulated under the CCR rule.
You can find the industry-reported data here. For more information about Big Bend Station, see EIP's 2019 National Coal Ash Report.