AmerenUE’s Labadie Power Plant and Charah, Inc. Open Concrete Packaging Facility				September 20, 2006
Ameren Corporation executives today (Sept. 20) joined state and federal officials and executives from Charah®, Inc., The Home Depot® and QUIKRETE® to unveil and demonstrate a unique concrete packaging facility on the property of AmerenUE's largest coal-fired power plant―Labadie Plant in Franklin County, Mo.    In its first week of operation, this plant will recycle 60,000 tons of fly and bottom ash annually in two million bags of high-quality concrete mix. This new facility will cut in half the bottom ash product that must be disposed of at AmerenUE’s largest power plant. This concrete mix will be packaged at the facility in innovative, sealed plastic bags that are less likely to break, are air-tight, and offer two handles for easy carrying. The concrete then will be shipped from the facility directly to 24 Home Depot stores in the St. Louis market.    In addition to company executives, State Representative Kevin Threlkeld (R-109th District) and Missouri State Senator John Griesheimer (R-26th District) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 7 Officer Chet McLaughlin offered comments about the importance of this new facility to the environment and the region.
Pallets of packaged concrete will go to 24 Home Depot stores throughout the St. Louis Metro area.
			The concrete factory includes multiple conveyor belts and bins that are part of this state-of-the art, highly automated production facility.
The exterior of the 35,000-square-foot concrete factory that turns fly ash and bottom ash into concrete sits on a hill created by 200,000 tons of Labadie Plant bottom ash used as structural fill. Charah, an ash management firm, has a similar facility in Virginia, but this is the first to operate in the United States on power plant property―closest to the source of the ash.
The Charah, Inc., facility sits on the Labadie Power Plant Road only a few miles from Labadie Plant, which provides the raw material for the concrete―60,000 tons of ash. This facility will cut in half this waste product resulting from the burning of coal to create electricity.