"I don't know if the situation would have been avoided, but it would have helped if it were in place," she said at a House of Representatives hearing yesterday.

The hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, a part of the Committee on Natural Resources, was the first time in a decade subcommittee members considered what, if anything, needs to be done to address health and environmental risks associated with fly ash and coal-combustion waste, a byproduct from burning coal in power plants.

In a 2000 report, the Environmental Protection Agency recommended safeguards for controlling the substance but they were never enacted, leaving the dumping of the substance loosely controlled to this day. But concerns about what to do with fly ash are growing throughout the country. About 125 million tons of coal ash are produced in the United States annually, about half of which is turned into products such as drywall and bricks. The rest is dumped in landfills and mines, a practice that has caused health risks and environmental damage.

In 1995, Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and later Constellation Energy Group began dumping fly ash into a surface mine owned by BBSS Inc. In October 2006, the county began testing nearby drinking-water wells and found 23 contained traces of heavy metals like lead, aluminum and arsenic and beryllium.

Some of the substances were carcinogenic, others damaged organs or could cause nerve damage and the county determined that fly ash was to blame. In September, dumping there stopped and a month later MDE ordered Constellation and BBSS to fix the contamination and pay $1 million, the third largest fine in the department's history. By that point, 2.4 million tons of the substance had been dumped there.

Elsewhere, a Pennsylvania court upheld a $1.5 million fine last month against a power company after a fly-ash holding tank broke, spilling substance into a nearby river. In Indiana, a fly-ash dump has become a federal superfund cleanup site. Also, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will have a hearing on new fly ash regulations tomorrow.

However, any new regulations need to assure coal remains a viable source of energy for the country and doesn't put jobs at risk, said the committee chairman Rep. Jim Costa, D-Calif.. Others were primarily concerned about how fly-ash disposal could pose a public health concern.

"I'm particularly concerned about the health risks," said Rep. John P. Sarbanes, D-Baltimore County. Mr. Sarbanes doesn't sit on the committee but his district includes the Gambrills mine.

Mark Squillace, director of the Natural Resource Law Center at the University of Colorado Law School, said fly ash should be disposed of only in "exceptional circumstances" and the government should encourage so-called "beneficial use;" things like turning coal waste into building or road materials. This can be done through a tax or by creating standards for using fly ash in federal highway projects, he said.

"There are some minimal federal standards that can and should be imposed," he said.

Ms. Wilson recommended the federal government research fly and coal waste and create minimal standards for how the substance can be disposed.

David Goss, director of the American Coal Ash Association, said additional regulations are not needed and could, if implemented, deter companies from reusing fly ash as additive to asphalt and building materials.

Also, each situation and each coal waste dump site is unique, making it impossible to protect some parts of the country without harming others, he said. The federal government should conduct research and help states make their own regulations that best help their constituents.

"We would prefer their guidance, not their regulations," he said.

But at a February hearing before the Maryland House Environmental Matters Committee, Mr. Goss urged state legislators to not support legislation that would require a liner and cap on fly-ash landfills, and to defer to MDE, which was in the process of creating similar regulations.

Mr. Goss said Maryland officials were able to handle the fly-ash problem effectively without federal rules in place.

"Maryland did not need federal regulations to address this issue," he said.

But, according to state documents, MDE's first hint of a problem in Gambrills occurred after sulfate levels passed allowable concentrations in 1999. However, much was done to curb rising contamination levels, and the department has allowed Constellation to dump at another location at the mine.

Investigations into the site didn't begin until October 2006 when the county started testing water samples collected from nearby wells.

Norman Harvey, whose well near the mine was contaminated, said the state and county's response was frustratingly and didn't help him. He found out his well was contaminated in fall 2006, seven years after sulfate levels passed safe thresholds, and has since lived off of bottled water, paying for it with his own money. He said if there were federal regulations he wouldn't be in this situation he called an "environmental injustice."

When asked about the seven-year delay between elevated sulfate levels and the state's response, Mr. Goss backtracked and said the state's "reaction" to the fly-ash problem, not its regulation, was effective.

Mr. Goss said what happened in Gambrills would not happen today because different practices are used to prevent problems.

"I think that Gambrills is a leftover from a previous era," he said.

But as recently as February 2007, MDE and Constellation officials were in discussions about expanding dumping in Gambrills, using the same techniques and design plans that were used in 1995.

There are nine coal power plants in Maryland, producing a total of about 2 million tons of coal waste a year. Additionally there 29 fly ash dump sites, 20 of which are former coal mines and the BBSS sand and gravel mine in Gambrills.

But there are no state regulations specifically for fly ash or other coal waste products, Ms. Wilson said.