Time to Hold Duke Energy Accountable for Dangerous Coal Ash Impoundments to Prevent Next Spill

North Carolina, home to more high-hazard coal ash impoundments than any other state, has been ground-zero for coal-ash issues for years … long before the lawsuits began to fly. That’s probably because the state’s largest city, Charlotte, is home to the nation’s largest energy producer and anti-coal-ash-regulation lobbyist, Duke Energy.
The city is also home to former Duke Energy employee and current state governor Pat McCrory as well as a drinking water reservoir with two unlined, high-hazard, leaking coal ash ponds that have been proven—as have the Dan River plant’s waste ponds—to be contaminating groundwater.
[blackoutgallery id="321362"]
To suggest that the government and the company have been involved in an incestuous affair for nearly a century is putting it mildly, so it’s no surprise to me that the federal government is now investigating the state’s handling of Duke Energy’s latest coal ash spill into the Dan River, even as the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has backed away from a third deplorable settlement with the company over its coal-ash mess. What is amazing is that the agency is developing a coal ash “task force” to study the issue again in lieu of forcing the company to adhere to state and federal laws.
“It is sad and remarkable that DENR’s response to the Dan River spill is to form a committee,” says Frank Holleman, an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center which is involved in the coal ash lawsuits against the company. He also pointed out that the state has years of data on coal ash pollution and has testified under oath that the company’s pollution is illegal and a serious threat to the public and clean water.
The call for a task force comes a week after both the state of North Carolina and the city of Danville, VA, admittedly relied on Duke Energy’s “sketchy” post-spill reporting and water quality testing to soothe public fears over water pollution; those test results were from one of the company’s private labs.
The day DENR announced its task force, Duke Energy inspected a second pipe beneath its Dan River coal ash ponds. It took state inspectors two days to actually watch the video taken by the company of the interior of the pipe. The next day, Tracy Davis, director of the North Carolina Division of Energy, Mineral and Land Resources, sent a letter to Duke Energy demanding that the company submit an action plan within 10 days detailing its plan to repair the failing pipe he cited as “leaking,” writing "water jets from pressurized infiltration (termed "gusher" in the video) were observed ..."
It wasn’t until 7:30 p.m. on Valentine’s Day that DENR alerted the media, and thus the public, of the second failing pipe.
[blackoutgallery id="320474"]
Even the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) admitted at a public meeting on Feb. 11 that it is working with the company on a solution, not enforcing the state laws Duke Energy is violating or even the federal government’s laws—such as the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act which, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee who spoke at the same meeting, the company may also be violating.
The state’s newest delay tactics and calls for more time to study the problem are less than comforting; those coal ash impoundments have already been studied ad nauseum and found harmful to both human health and the environment. How much more evidence do we need to prove once and for all that Duke Energy is illegally and continually polluting North Carolina’s waterways?
For decades the state of North Carolina has shielded Duke Energy when it comes to coal ash pollution even as the company’s own reporting data has proven that its waste ponds—which can also include chemicals and raw sewage—have contaminated groundwater beneath many of its coal ash ponds in the state. The company’s ponds have also already endured a thorough assessment by the EPA in 2009 and DENR assessments that led to high-hazard ratings for many of the ponds. And still coal companies like Duke Energy are allowed to self-monitor groundwater monitoring wells—wells the industry promised the EPA it would install in 2000 via an agreement that left coal ash federally unregulated.
Guess when the groundwater wells at the coal ash ponds were sunk at the company’s Riverbend plant—the one that pollutes Charlotte’s drinking water all day every day? December 2008, the same month as the Tennessee Valley Authority’s devastating disaster made coal ash famous. More than five years later, that spill is still being cleaned up.
The state has also protected the company—not the people—from coal ash pollution issues by exempting, until 2010, the structures that hold the waste in its towering impoundments. Those earthen dams were exempt from the state’s Dam Safety Act of 1967 and regulated by the N.C. Utilities Commission, under the umbrella of the state Department of Commerce—not DENR, a beleaguered agency that has lost a significant number of staff members (some quite publicly) under McCrory’s administration, which altered the agency’s mission statement to focus on customer service.
This past summer, I asked DENR spokesperson Drew Elliot who the department’s customers are, he said, “regulated communities.” Then he added “environmentalists.” And then, after a long pause, he said, “and anyone else the agency touches.” Before that, he told me, “There was a big feeling in the business community that we had an adversarial relationship (with them). DENR was deemed the number one enemy of business and had a huge target on its back because of that.”
Rep. Pricey Harrison (D-Greensboro), who wrote the 2010 legislation that forced Duke Energy to install more groundwater monitoring wells, have third-parties inspect its dams every two years instead of every five and moved regulatory authority to DENR, described the North Carolina General Assembly as an “antagonistic environment for environmental regulations.”
That doesn’t leave much hope for the latest legislative promise, this time from state senator Tom Apodaca (R-Henderson), to force a cleanup.
The company did issue an apology promising to right the situation five days after the Dan River spill began, but if it really wants to convince citizens of North Carolina it’s the good neighbor it proclaims itself to be the company will stop all of this nonsense right now and clean up its mess before another more serious coal ash spill happens in a more populated place, like Charlotte.
[blackoutgallery id="320266"]
The company set the precedence itself: In the 1950s, the coal ash ponds were installed in an effort to prevent air pollution, long before the Clean Air Act. Even now, the company is helping the city of Eden, NC, the site of its recent spill, by upgrading its water treatment facility because of pollution from its Belews Creek plant’s coal ash impoundments, which are also on the Dan River.
When Duke Energy spokeswoman Erin Culbert was asked if the company was helping the city of Eden without the prompting of regulation or legislation, she responded, “Yes. That’s correct.”
“The recent Dan River disaster demonstrates that immediate action is necessary,” Holleman says, pointing to South Carolina as an example, “where coal ash is being removed from dangerous, leaking coal ash lagoons.”
The “immediate action” of moving forward with clean-ups at every one of the company’s coal plants may be mired in politics and ineptitude at the state and federal level, but such a move is well within the purview of no-federal-tax paying, multi-billion-dollar corporation like Duke Energy and should be an ongoing demand from the company’s shareholders and customers.
For more information on this third largest coal ash spill in U.S. history, read Waterkeeper Alliance’s four-part series: part one, part two, part three and part four.
Visit EcoWatch’s COAL and WATER pages for more related news on this topic.
‘Existential Threat to Our Survival’: See the 19 Australian Ecosystems Already Collapsing
By Dana M Bergstrom, Euan Ritchie, Lesley Hughes and Michael Depledge
In 1992, 1,700 scientists warned that human beings and the natural world were "on a collision course." Seventeen years later, scientists described planetary boundaries within which humans and other life could have a "safe space to operate." These are environmental thresholds, such as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and changes in land use.
The Good and Bad News
<p><span>Ecosystems consist of living and non-living components, and their interactions. They work like a super-complex engine: when some components are removed or stop working, knock-on consequences can lead to system failure.</span></p><p>Our study is based on measured data and observations, not modeling or predictions for the future. Encouragingly, not all ecosystems we examined have collapsed across their entire range. We still have, for instance, some intact reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, especially in deeper waters. And northern Australia has some of the most intact and least-modified stretches of savanna woodlands on Earth.</p><p><span>Still, collapses are happening, including in regions critical for growing food. This includes the </span><a href="https://www.mdba.gov.au/importance-murray-darling-basin/where-basin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Murray-Darling Basin</a><span>, which covers around 14% of Australia's landmass. Its rivers and other freshwater systems support more than </span><a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/latestproducts/94F2007584736094CA2574A50014B1B6?opendocument" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30% of Australia's food</a><span> production.</span></p><p><span></span><span>The effects of floods, fires, heatwaves and storms do not stop at farm gates; they're felt equally in agricultural areas and natural ecosystems. We shouldn't forget how towns ran out of </span><a href="https://www.mdba.gov.au/issues-murray-darling-basin/drought#effects" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">drinking water</a><span> during the recent drought.</span></p><p><span></span><span>Drinking water is also at risk when ecosystems collapse in our water catchments. In Victoria, for example, the degradation of giant </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/logging-must-stop-in-melbournes-biggest-water-supply-catchment-106922" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Mountain Ash forests</a><span> greatly reduces the amount of water flowing through the Thompson catchment, threatening nearly five million people's drinking water in Melbourne.</span></p><p>This is a dire <em data-redactor-tag="em">wake-up</em> call — not just a <em data-redactor-tag="em">warning</em>. Put bluntly, current changes across the continent, and their potential outcomes, pose an existential threat to our survival, and other life we share environments with.</p><p><span>In investigating patterns of collapse, we found most ecosystems experience multiple, concurrent pressures from both global climate change and regional human impacts (such as land clearing). Pressures are often </span><a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1365-2664.13427" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">additive and extreme</a><span>.</span></p><p>Take the last 11 years in Western Australia as an example.</p><p>In the summer of 2010 and 2011, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/marine-heatwaves-are-getting-hotter-lasting-longer-and-doing-more-damage-95637" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">heatwave</a> spanning more than 300,000 square kilometers ravaged both marine and land ecosystems. The extreme heat devastated forests and woodlands, kelp forests, seagrass meadows and coral reefs. This catastrophe was followed by two cyclones.</p><p>A record-breaking, marine heatwave in late 2019 dealt a further blow. And another marine heatwave is predicted for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/24/wa-coastline-facing-marine-heatwave-in-early-2021-csiro-predicts" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">this April</a>.</p>What to Do About It?
<p><span>Our brains trust comprises 38 experts from 21 universities, CSIRO and the federal Department of Agriculture Water and Environment. Beyond quantifying and reporting more doom and gloom, we asked the question: what can be done?</span></p><p>We devised a simple but tractable scheme called the 3As:</p><ul><li>Awareness of what is important</li><li>Anticipation of what is coming down the line</li><li>Action to stop the pressures or deal with impacts.</li></ul><p>In our paper, we identify positive actions to help protect or restore ecosystems. Many are already happening. In some cases, ecosystems might be better left to recover by themselves, such as coral after a cyclone.</p><p>In other cases, active human intervention will be required – for example, placing artificial nesting boxes for Carnaby's black cockatoos in areas where old trees have been <a href="https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/factsheet-carnabys-black-cockatoo-calyptorhynchus-latirostris" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">removed</a>.</p><p><span>"Future-ready" actions are also vital. This includes reinstating </span><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/a-burning-question-fire/12395700" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cultural burning practices</a><span>, which have </span><a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-you-have-unfinished-business-its-time-to-let-our-fire-people-care-for-this-land-135196" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">multiple values and benefits for Aboriginal communities</a><span> and can help minimize the risk and strength of bushfires.</span></p><p>It might also include replanting banks along the Murray River with species better suited to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/gardening/factsheets/my-garden-path---matt-hansen/12322978" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">warmer conditions</a>.</p><p>Some actions may be small and localized, but have substantial positive benefits.</p><p>For example, billions of migrating Bogong moths, the main summer food for critically endangered mountain pygmy possums, have not arrived in their typical numbers in Australian alpine regions in recent years. This was further exacerbated by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/six-million-hectares-of-threatened-species-habitat-up-in-smoke-129438" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2019-20</a> fires. Brilliantly, <a href="https://www.zoo.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Zoos Victoria</a> anticipated this pressure and developed supplementary food — <a href="https://theconversation.com/looks-like-an-anzac-biscuit-tastes-like-a-protein-bar-bogong-bikkies-help-mountain-pygmy-possums-after-fire-131045" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bogong bikkies</a>.</p><p><span>Other more challenging, global or large-scale actions must address the </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iICpI9H0GkU&t=34s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">root cause of environmental threats</a><span>, such as </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0504-8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">human population growth and per-capita consumption</a><span> of environmental resources.</span><br></p><p>We must rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero, remove or suppress invasive species such as <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/mam.12080" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">feral cats</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-buffel-kerfuffle-how-one-species-quietly-destroys-native-wildlife-and-cultural-sites-in-arid-australia-149456" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">buffel grass</a>, and stop widespread <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-reduce-fire-risk-and-meet-climate-targets-over-300-scientists-call-for-stronger-land-clearing-laws-113172" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">land clearing</a> and other forms of habitat destruction.</p>Our Lives Depend On It
<p>The multiple ecosystem collapses we have documented in Australia are a harbinger for <a href="https://www.iucn.org/news/protected-areas/202102/natures-future-our-future-world-speaks" target="_blank">environments globally</a>.</p><p>The simplicity of the 3As is to show people <em>can</em> do something positive, either at the local level of a landcare group, or at the level of government departments and conservation agencies.</p><p>Our lives and those of our <a href="https://theconversation.com/children-are-our-future-and-the-planets-heres-how-you-can-teach-them-to-take-care-of-it-113759" target="_blank">children</a>, as well as our <a href="https://theconversation.com/taking-care-of-business-the-private-sector-is-waking-up-to-natures-value-153786" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">economies</a>, societies and <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-address-the-ecological-crisis-aboriginal-peoples-must-be-restored-as-custodians-of-country-108594" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cultures</a>, depend on it.</p><p>We simply cannot afford any further delay.</p><p><em><a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dana-m-bergstrom-1008495" target="_blank" style="">Dana M Bergstrom</a> is a principal research scientist at the University of Wollongong. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/euan-ritchie-735" target="_blank" style="">Euan Ritchie</a> is a professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences at Deakin University. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/lesley-hughes-5823" target="_blank">Lesley Hughes</a> is a professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-depledge-114659" target="_blank">Michael Depledge</a> is a professor and chair, Environment and Human Health, at the University of Exeter. </em></p><p><em>Disclosure statements: Dana Bergstrom works for the Australian Antarctic Division and is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wollongong. Her research including fieldwork on Macquarie Island and in Antarctica was supported by the Australian Antarctic Division.</em></p><p><em>Euan Ritchie receives funding from the Australian Research Council, The Australia and Pacific Science Foundation, Australian Geographic, Parks Victoria, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. Euan Ritchie is a Director (Media Working Group) of the Ecological Society of Australia, and a member of the Australian Mammal Society.</em></p><p><em>Lesley Hughes receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Councillor with the Climate Council of Australia, a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists and a Director of WWF-Australia.</em></p><p><em>Michael Depledge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><p><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/existential-threat-to-our-survival-see-the-19-australian-ecosystems-already-collapsing-154077" target="_blank" style="">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>- Coral Reef Tipping Point: 'Near-Annual' Bleaching May Occur ... ›
- Scientists Warn Humanity in Denial of Looming 'Collapse of ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
New EarthX Special 'Protecting the Amazon' Suggests Ways to Save the World’s Greatest Rainforest
To save the planet, we must save the Amazon rainforest. To save the rainforest, we must save its indigenous peoples. And to do that, we must demarcate their land.
A new EarthxTV film special calls for the protection of the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people that call it home. EarthxTV.org
- Meet the 'Women Warriors' Protecting the Amazon Forest - EcoWatch ›
- Indigenous Tribes Are Using Drones to Protect the Amazon ... ›
- Amazon Rainforest Will Collapse by 2064, New Study Predicts ... ›
- Deforestation in Amazon Skyrockets to 12-Year High Under Bolsonaro ›
- Amazon Rainforest on the Brink of Turning Into a Net Carbon Emitter ... ›
Trending
By Anke Rasper
"Today's interim report from the UNFCCC is a red alert for our planet," said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
The report, released Friday, looks at the national climate efforts of 75 states that have already submitted their updated "nationally determined contributions," or NDCs. The countries included in the report are responsible for about 30% of the world's global greenhouse gas emissions.
- World Leaders Fall Short of Meeting Paris Agreement Goal - EcoWatch ›
- UN Climate Change Conference COP26 Delayed to November ... ›
- 5 Years After Paris: How Countries' Climate Policies Match up to ... ›
- Biden Win Puts World 'Within Striking Distance' of 1.5 C Paris Goal ... ›
- Biden Reaffirms Commitment to Rejoining Paris Agreement ... ›
Plastic Burning Makes It Harder for New Delhi Residents to See, Study Suggests
India's New Delhi has been called the "world air pollution capital" for its high concentrations of particulate matter that make it harder for its residents to breathe and see. But one thing has puzzled scientists, according to The Guardian. Why does New Delhi see more blinding smogs than other polluted Asian cities, such as Beijing?
- This Indian Startup Turns Polluted Air Into Climate-Friendly Tiles ... ›
- How to Win the Fight Against Plastic - EcoWatch ›
In a historic move, the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) voted Thursday to ban hydraulic fracking in the region. The ban was supported by all four basin states — New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York — putting a permanent end to hydraulic fracking for natural gas along the 13,539-square-mile basin, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
- Appalachian Fracking Boom Was a Jobs Bust, Finds New Report ... ›
- Long-Awaited EPA Study Says Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water ... ›
- Pennsylvania Fracking Water Contamination Much Higher Than ... ›