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Citizens were given the opportunity to ask Ameren officials about the project which has garnered greater local attention lately.
More information was available than the company had previously shared, but many more questions remain.
Peter Price with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources was in attendance.
Price said the facility still has yet to be designed but it will be required to have a minimum of three down-gradient groundwater monitoring wells.
Price said similar coal waste facilities exist in floodplains in Missouri near power plants in the New Madrid and Portage Des Sioux areas.
Similar informational meetings held for the public in those places drew very few attendees, however, Price said.
The chance for the facility to be breached by floodwaters was a concern of many attendees.
Ameren officials stated that the dirt and plastic berm around the facility will be 3 feet higher than the Missouri River's crest during flooding in 1993, the highest recorded levels it has reached.
The 1993 flood levels were considered the 500-year levels, meaning the river shouldn't reach such heights again for five centuries, said Michael Menne, Ameren vice president for environment, safety and health.
If approved, the Labadie facility will be used to store the various forms of waste left over from the burning of coal, or coal combustion products (CCPs).
The CCPs are already produced at the plant in the form of fly ash, bottom ash and boiler slag, according to Ameren officials.
Currently some of the Labadie plant's fly and bottom ash is reused to make Quikrete cement.
"About 60 percent of the plant's total waste each year is recycled," AmerenUE spokesman Tim Fox said.
Fly ash, the unrecycled bottom ash and boiler slag all currently go into retention ponds for storage.
Those ponds are nearing capacity, Fox said.
To meet environmental regulations, the plant also will be required to install new scrubbers which will capture more airborne particles.
Those particles can be turned into a synthetic gypsum which can be used in the production of drywall and other products, Ameren officials said.
Fly ash, which is roughly 40 percent calcium, also can be used to make a concrete-like substance when mixed with water.
Ameren officials said that the demand for ash for uses such as concrete, however, does not meet the high levels of availability.
Roughly 56 percent of the fly ash generated in the United States was put into facilities in 2007 along with 60 percent of bottom ash and 20 percent of boiler slag, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Fly ash also contains trace metals including vanadium, zinc, copper, chromium, nickel, lead, arsenic and mercury. Mercury and arsenic are the least common of those metals.
Fox said the Labadie plant currently recycles about 60 percent of its coal waste.
The EPA said "at this time, the level of mercury in fly ash has not been considered significant enough to create a health risk" in a December 2008 report.
The same report also said that new mercury-capturing technologies being implemented at some sites result in fly ash with much higher mercury contents.
The ash and slag have not been declared hazardous by the EPA, and last month EPA head Lisa Jackson said the agency was making a regulatory determination on whether or not the material will be reclassified and reregulated.
Jackson told CBS's "60 Minutes" that that decision would come no later than December.
That fly ash is kept from circulating in the air in the plant through the use of misting devices and other equipment.
In the facility, it would be turned into a hard, concrete substance to avoid releasing it into the air.
Ameren officials said the choice of the Labadie landfill site, which would be built on 1,100 acres of property, all in the floodplain, was based on economics.
"We looked at Labadie, our biggest plant, and the further we got from there, the more expensive the whole thing got," said AmerenUE spokesman Mike Cleary.
The 40-year-old Labadie plant is the second newest and largest Ameren plant.
It produces 2,405 megawatts per hour across its four units and 1,850 tons of CCPs a day.
Other Ameren plants produce far less, but are also smaller. The Rush Island plant produces 1,181 megawatts per hour and 1,100 tons of waste a day, according to posters at the Monday night meeting. The Meramec plant produces 841 megawatts per hour with 525 tons of waste a day.
The proposed Labadie facility also could have other waste trucked and shipped in from other Ameren sites.
Ameren officials did not discuss how the additional traffic generated in shipping the multiple tons of extra waste to the Labadie site would be addressed, if at all.
Ameren officials at Monday's meeting heard from many of the concerned residents.
"No one wants this in their backyard," one official said to a group of citizens. "But until we have better technologies available, it has to go somewhere."
That somewhere would be cells, each of which would be built large enough to hold five years of waste. The cells would be opened in 20-acre sections. In all, the 400 acres would take 100 years to fill, but AmerenUE spokesman Tim Fox said the permit the company is applying for is only for 40 years of operation.
That waste would sit on top of a 3-foot layer, including a 2-foot impermeable layer, to protect against groundwater contamination.
While the Missouri DNR must approve Ameren's permit and design plans for the project, the county's role still is unclear.
County Counselor Mark Vincent had no comment on whether or not the county would have to approve any form of permitting for the landfill.
Senior Planner Scottie Eagan said she did not know what the property currently was zoned, having not yet seen details on the proposed landfill site, nor knew if the county had zoning regulations regarding solid waste landfills.
While LEO members say the facility could rise as high as 200 feet, Ameren officials said those piles would be no higher than current coal stockpiles.
The Labadie plant, which opened in 1970 and became fully operational several years later, employs about 300 people fulltime.
LEO president Ginger Gambaro was unavailable for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Editor's Note: Look for comments from Gambaro and LEO on the meeting and the organization's goals in the Weekend Missourian.
