The Environmental Protection Agency is hosting a Webinar on Thursday, February 27, from 1 to 2 p.m. Eastern time to provide an overview of the Agency's recently released Methodology for Evaluating Encapsulated Beneficial Uses of Coal Combustion Residuals and the Coal Combustion Residual Beneficial Use Evaluation: Fly Ash Concrete and FGD Gypsum Wallboard.  The methodology supports beneficial use decisions by allowing the user to determine whether releases from an encapsulated beneficial use of coal combustion residuals during use are comparable to or lower than those from analogous products made without CCRs or are at or below relevant regulatory and health-based benchmarks.

EPA used the methodology to evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated from fly ash used as a direct substitute for portland cement in concrete and from FGD gypsum used as a replacement for mined gypsum in wallboard. EPA's evaluation concluded that the beneficial use of encapsulated CCRs in concrete and wallboard is appropriate because they are either comparable to analogous products or below the relevant benchmarks.