FirstEnergy completes closure of West Virginia ash landfill

FirstEnergy Corp. announced Friday it had completed the closure of an ash landfill in Berkeley County, W.V., paving the way to converting the property to a solar facility.

In December 2021, First Energy received approval to convert the R. Paul Smith Power Station, along with others, to a solar facility from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Allegheny Energy Supply Company, a subsidiary of FirstEnergy, closed the power plant after a successful 20-year effort to beneficially reuse the plant’s ash byproduct. FirstEnergy harvested more than 3 million tons of ash from the landfill, which was then sold to two major cement manufacturers to fuel cement kilns.

The 26-acre facility is one of five locations where FirstEnergy’s electric company Mon Power will build a solar facility as part of the West Virginia solar program.

“The reclamation and closure of this former landfill has generated a positive economic impact for our company, and as the future home for one of our solar projects in West Virginia, it symbolizes our efforts to build a brighter and more sustainable future for the communities we serve,” said Mark Vindivich, a manager in FirstEnergy’s environmental department who oversaw the project.

Three years after the site’s closure in 2012, the company started working with West Virginia to reuse the property by removing infrastructure like piping and engineered liners while decommissioning two dams on the property. By June 2022, FirstEnergy’s request to end environmental monitoring under the solid waste permit was approved, marking the first time a company has earned this type of approval in that state.

Mon Power aims to build a six-megawatt solar facility at the 26-acre site as part of a plan to construct five utility-scale solar facilities totaling 50 megawatts of renewable power. Mon Power and Potomac Edison are currently accepting customer subscriptions to purchase power from the facilities through solar renewable energy credits.