Seward Generating Station has 17 groundwater monitoring wells, 17 of which have been polluted above federal advisory levels based on samples collected between March 17, 2010 and May 09, 2014. Groundwater at this site contains unsafe levels of manganese, nickel, sulfate, cadmium, arsenic, antimony, lead, selenium, boron, chromium and molybdenum.
Site descriptionNRG's Seward Generating Station is a recently reconstructed 525-MW fluidized bed combustion power plant. The current plant replaced an older coal-fired plant of the same name in 2004. The original plant began operating in 1921. Coal ash and coal refuse from the older plant was disposed of in three unlined on-site ash disposal areas. One of these disposal areas, the Seward No. 1 Ash Site, closed in 1982 as a result of legal actions concerning numerous violations of Pennsylvania's Solid Waste Management Act.
Seward Generating Station is among the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's list of potential damage cases, indicating that it has potentially polluted groundwater or surface water at levels which threaten human health and the environment. For more information regarding Seward Generating Station, see EIP's 2010 report, Out of Control.