Kathleen McGinty, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Protection, said at a state Senate committee meeting in Burgettstown yesterday that incentives should be improved to build more plants capable of burning waste coal.

The senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, chaired by Sen. Mary Jo White, R-Franklin, Venango County, also heard testimony from industry, citizen group and labor representatives in support of a Rendell administration proposal to include waste coal as well as wind and solar power in an Advanced Energy Portfolio Standard.

Inclusion would provide economic benefits, including construction funding, for such energy producing facilities.

The hearing was held less that three miles from the Beech Hollow waste coal pile, the largest east of the Mississippi River, containing 38 million tons of coal waste on 1,000 acres. An electric generating plant that would burn the waste coal has been proposed for the site.

Pennsylvania is home to 15 of the 20 waste coal electric generating facilities in the nation. Since 1988, when the first started operating, to the end of 2003, they have burned 88.5 million tons of waste coal.