Alternatives for Future Coal Waste Disposal - Coal Waste Impoundments: Risks, Responses, and Alternatives - page 147

granting reduced bonding or regulatory obligations and moneys from
Abandoned Mine Land funds for environmental cleanup.
A third type of policy is research, development, and demonstration funded
wholly by government or jointly with the industry. The federal government, and
particularly the DOE, has long had research and development programs in this
area, and many of the alternatives discussed above were first proven in these
programs. There is always a gap between research and development and
widespread implementation of technologies, but greater emphasis on joint large-
scale demonstrations with industry can help bridge this gap.
A fourth approach, particularly useful where alternative technologies are
already commercially available, is to assist the industry in evaluating these
alternatives in an integrated, objective, and thorough manner. Typically,
information about alternatives comes to the industry piecemeal through vendors
of new technologies. Rarely is it possible to perform an objective evaluation of
the full range of alternatives on the same basis. If such an evaluation is
performed by one company, it is rarely shared with others in the industry. The
EPA's Design for the Environment Program has developed an approach for
evaluating and comparing the relative costs, performance, and health and
environmental risks of alternative technologies that provide the same functions.
In this program multiple companies and vendors participate and supply
information to an independent academic institution that evaluates the
technologies. Costs are assessed using activity-based cost accounting methods
that allocate the full costs of technologies, bringing costs out of overhead
accounts that may have been overlooked in a traditional cost estimate. Other
stakeholders, such as government agencies, labor organizations, and
environmental groups, are involved in setting up the evaluation and advising the
team throughout. The academic institution can keep proprietary data
confidential and out of the hands of regulatory agencies. The results of the
evaluation are then widely disseminated to members of the industry for their use
in choosing technologies. EPA neither makes these decisions nor recommends
technologies. The committee recommends that the total system of mining,
preparation, transportation, and utilization of coal and the associated
environmental and economic issues be studied in a comprehensive manner
to identify the appropriate technologies for each component that will
eliminate or reduce the need for slurry impoundments while optimizing the
performance objectives of the system. The committee concludes that a similar
analysis of the waste use and disposal technologies that make up the coal
system would have value. The committee recommends incorporating life-
cycle assessment of the costs and environmental impacts of the alternatives
to evaluate