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Faced with this major test of its environmental principles, PPL pledged to protect public safety and to do whatever was necessary to make things right.
A massive effort began to clean up the spill, assess the effects on the environment and the community, understand the causes of the failure, correct the internal processes that led to the incident and communicate progress of the cleanup to the public.
A primary concern was water quality. Testing of river water and a municipal water authority intake about 10 miles downstream of the power plant began immediately. Testing focused on the components of fly ash that could be of concern to public health: arsenic, mercury and selenium. Testing of more than 220 residential wells also began, although contamination of wells from the spill was highly unlikely. Despite that, PPL made bottled water available to all area residents at no charge.
 Within days of the spill, PPL hired Normandeau Associates, a respected and experienced environmental assessment firm, to conduct complete biological assessments of the spill's effects on the Delaware River. After analyzing fish and macroinvertebrates collected from the river, Normandeau reported no short-term effects from the ash spill. It is continuing the biological evaluation with independent oversight from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
We also hired BBL to sample and analyze river sediment upstream and downstream of the plant for constituents of fly ash. Three sets of river sediment samples have been collected. No fly ash constituents have been found at levels of concern in the river sediment.
Removal of ash deposits from the ground and river bed began when the leak was stopped. Hundreds of people worked around the clock to remove as much ash as possible before the arrival of heavy rain from the remnants of Hurricane Katrina. Within weeks of the spill, fields and the creek bed that had been coated with ash were cleaned and reseeded. In the river, divers vacuumed acres of river bed using pumps mounted on custom-built floating platforms.
Engineers performed a detailed review of ash basin design at Martins Creek and other PPL generating plants. The company made significant upgrades, including backup features to prevent leaks, at the Martins Creek ash basin and other basins with similar designs. PPL appointed its director of Environmental Management, Robert J. Barkanic, to head the cleanup effort on a full-time basis. He was responsible for all environmental work and for relations with government agencies, community leaders and plant neighbors in two states — Pennsylvania and New Jersey. As part of a commitment to communicate openly about the cleanup process, PPL participated in numerous municipal meetings, created a special Web site about the spill cleanup project, established a toll-free telephone number for the public to contact the cleanup director and published a newsletter that was mailed to about 3,000 residents near the plant.
PPL also published the results of its critical self-assessment into the root causes of the spill. That report is available on the Internet at www.pplweb.com/martins+creek+cleanup. The primary cause was a fabrication defect in a wooden stop log used in the basin's discharge system.
“It was not an easy decision to make public a report that exposed PPL's flaws,” Barkanic said. “But improvement is possible only after you face up to the need for change. Putting out an internal report critical of our operations and actions is just one of the necessary steps in regaining the community's confidence and trust.”
PPL also established a Martins Creek Environmental Advisory Committee, which includes community representatives and environmental organizations. PPL has received a notice of violation from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection related to the spill. A Natural Resource Damage Assessment team, with representation from state and federal agencies, is reviewing the spill. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has conducted a preliminary assessment of the incident and concluded that PPL's response and actions have been proper.
As of June 30, 2006, PPL had recorded an unusual pre-tax charge of $37 million for the estimated cost of the spill cleanup. These accounting charges are estimates and may change again in the future. They do not include fines or penalties that may be assessed as a result of the incident. However even now, we're still working hard to make sure PPL lives up to the responsibilities of its Environmental Policy and passes the test to make things right again.
   
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