Zimmer Power Station has 28 groundwater monitoring wells, 18 of which have been polluted above federal advisory levels based on samples collected between December 29, 2015 and September 12, 2019. Groundwater at this site contains unsafe levels of lithium, boron, sulfate, cobalt, arsenic, radium and lead.
Site descriptionLuminant’s Zimmer Power Station is a 1,426-MW coal-fired power plant with one unit, located on the Ohio River near Moscow, in Clermont County, Ohio. The facility was first operational in 1991 and retired on May 31, 2022. Four coal ash disposal areas at the site are regulated by the federal coal ash rule: a lined 4-acre Coal Pile Runoff Pond, a lined Gypsum Storage Pond, a Landfill, and another 9-acre pond called D Basin. The Coal Pile Runoff Pond and D Basin are considered significant hazard dams, meaning that failure or misoperation could result in off-site environmental damage. The coal pile runoff pond was constructed in the 1980s and has a storage capacity of 17 acre-feet. D Basin was constructed after 2002 and has a capacity of 4 acre-feet. Zimmer Power Station’s D Basin, Coal Pile Runoff, Gypsum Recycle Pond and Landfill are all regulated under the CCR-rule. You can find the industry reported data here. For more information on the Zimmer Power Station, see EIP’s 2019 National Coal Ash report: Coal’s Poisonous Legacy.