NC: Duke Energy coal ash polluting water, fines may follow

Duke Energy is violating state pollution laws because its coal ash pits are polluting nearby waterways, North Carolina environmental regulators said Friday. Fines are being considered.

The state Division of Water Resources sent letters to the country’s largest electric company accusing Duke Energy of violating state law by allowing wastewater to leak from coal ash basins at 12 of the company’s 14 current or former coal-burning power plants.

Wastewater is what leaks from coal ash ponds into nearby water bodies. Coal ash is the residue left after decades of burning coal to generate power. It contains toxic materials like arsenic and chromium.

State regulators did not issue violation notices for two closed coal-ash plants — Riverbend near Mount Holly and Sutton near Wilmington. The Sutton plant’s basins don’t seep and state regulators issued a permit for seeps at Riverbend, state spokeswoman Stephanie Hawco wrote in an email.

Southern Environmental Law Center attorney Frank Holleman said his group has been telling Gov. Pat McCrory’s environmental agency, the Department of Environmental Quality, about the illegal discharges for three years.

“It has taken DEQ three years to take this proposed action. But still, at many of these sites, DEQ is only proposing to issue fines,” Holleman wrote in an email. “Proposed fines will not do these communities or their rivers one bit of good.”

DEQ is holding hearings this month to get public input on proposed classifications for all 32 coal-ash pits at 14 plants that will set their clean-up schedule. The agency has said only the basins at four plants the General Assembly already designated as high risk must be excavated and trucked away from waterways.

In an email sent to WWAY, Duke Energy sent the following statement:

The best way to reduce or eliminate seeps altogether is to safely remove the water from ash basins and close them in ways that protect people and the environment. That’s exactly what Duke Energy is doing right now.

There is nothing new here. Even the state environmental regulator acknowledges that seeps occur at every earthen impoundment, and those at ash basins are not impacting water quality.

We are doing everything the state has asked to address seeps, including cataloguing, testing and monitoring them. Nearly two years ago, the company included seeps in permit applications to the state and has been working through the process ever since.

Back in 2010, Duke Energy talked with NC DEQ about permitting seeps. At that time, the agency chose not to pursue that, believing seeps to be inconsequential.