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Coal ash contamination is widespread, new report finds

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Coal ash pollution has repeatedly coated North Carolina’s rivers bottoms with a plethora of toxic chemicals. The culprit from the state’s biggest spill? Duke Energy, a Charlotte-based energy giant.

But the issue of coal ash is not unique to North Carolina — it’s happening everywhere.

A new report, published jointly by the Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, found that 242 — the vast majority (91 percent) of the coal-fired power plants examined — had elevated levels of toxic heavy metals and other pollutants in nearby groundwater. Over half of those sites were contaminated with cancer-causing arsenic, and 60 percent were polluted with lithium, which has been linked to neurological damage. That’s…not good.

In 2014, North Carolina experienced the third-worst coal ash spill in recorded history, dumping 39,000 tons of waste product along 70 miles (110 kilometers) of the North Carolina-Virginia border. Residue from the spill coated the floor of the Dan River. This contamination poses many health risks to people living nearby, such as cancer and asthma.

The cleanup, which is still ongoing after five years, could cost Duke Energy to the tune of $5 billion, and according to the Associated Press, the company plans to pass the rather expensive bill along to its consumers.

The issue of coal ash in North Carolina flared up again last year when Hurricane Florence caused flooding at coal ash sites alongside Duke Energy’s L.V. Sutton Power Station, which carries coal ash components into a cooling lake and then into the nearby Cape Fear River. Cape Fear River is a water source for Wilmington, a city of 60,000 downstream from the coal ash site.

“Our communities are being harmed both by Duke Energy’s coal ash negligence and by repeated flooding from our changing climate,” said Bobby Jones of the Down East Coal Ash Coalition, speaking at a press conference at the First Baptist Church in downtown Raleigh. “Duke’s influence is a moral decay that erodes our democracy.”

Duke may not be the only company to blame (also, they’ve vehemently opposed the report’s findings.) The new report analyzed data from 265 plants–about three-quarters of all coal power plants in the U.S. And the report’s authors say they could be “understating” the extent of contamination since data is available only on coal ash sites actively in use; ponds and landfills that hold coal ash but are not receiving any were not included.

As with many environmental woes, low-income communities and communities of color are the ones likely to suffer the most from this threat as these sites tend to be located near their homes. According to Abel Russ, lead author of the report and an attorney for the Environmental Integrity Project, as long as EPA Administrator (and former coal lobbyist) Andrew Wheeler is at the helm of the environmental agency, that threat will not waver.

“At a time when the EPA […] is trying to roll back federal regulations on coal ash, these new data provide convincing evidence that we should be moving in the opposite direction,” Russ said in a statement.

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Coal ash contamination is widespread, new report finds

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N.C. chief epidemiologist resigns over water safety squabble

Coal ash chronicles

N.C. chief epidemiologist resigns over water safety squabble

By on Aug 12, 2016Share

Megan Davies, North Carolina’s chief epidemiologist, resigned this week in the latest bit of drama over drinking water safety — drama that involves the state’s biggest utility and the administration of Republican Gov. Pat McCrory. Davies, who accused state officials of deliberately misleading residents, gives up her post of seven years and an $188,000 annual salary.

The story begins in 2014, when a Duke Energy power plant spilled 40,000 tons of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons of wastewater into the Dan River. The ash is a byproduct of burning coal, and it’s harmful to people and ecosystems, containing silica, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.

In the aftermath of the spill, public concern grew over Duke’s 32 coal ash storage sites around the state. Many of them were revealed to be unprotected, sitting in unlined basins — just heaps of coal ash in giant pits, leaching toxic elements and a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium into the water table.

Soon after, hundreds of households near the storage sites were told by state officials not to drink from their wells due to concerns over water quality. In April 2015, Duke Energy began providing bottled water to those homes.

The do-not-drink order, however, didn’t last. A year after warning residents that their well water wasn’t safe, representatives from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Health and Human Services changed their minds, writing to the impacted households that their water was actually fine.

Testing, however, showed that well water near the coal ash sites still had levels of hexavalent chromium higher than in the municipal water supply. And Duke Energy, it turned out, had lobbied the state to reverse the do-not-drink order, even though nothing about most of the storage sites had changed. There were still unlined coal ash sites dotting the state, and there were still toxins in the water.

The optics for the state government were bad. McCrory was an employee of Duke Energy for nearly 30 years before becoming governor, and several state employees disagreed with the decision to reverse the do-not-drink order. This included Ken Rudo, a toxicologist for the Department of Health and Human Services, who believed that it was Duke’s connection to the government that led to the reversal of the order. Emails from within the department show that Rudo pushed back against DHHS’s decision and removed his name from the letter telling residents that their water was safe.

This information came to light when the Associated Press obtained a copy of a deposition Rudo gave in July as part of a lawsuit filed against Duke by the Sierra Club and other conservation groups. Duke tried, unsuccessfully, to seal the documents, but in court Rudo accused his boss — state public health director Randall Williams — of lying to the public.

“The state health director’s job is to protect public health,” said Rudo. “And in this specific instance, the opposite occurred. He knowingly told people that their water was safe when we knew it wasn’t.”

When the story came out, Williams and Department of Environmental Quality representative Tom Reeder responded by publishing an open letter portraying Rudo as a rogue scientist who doesn’t understand water toxicology.

Rudo, however, was not alone in criticizing the state. After Williams and Reeder’s public takedown of Rudo, Davies, the state’s top epidemiologist, resigned in protest.

“The editorial signed by Randall Williams and Tom Reeder presents a false narrative of a lone scientist in acting independently to set health screening levels and make water use recommendations to well owners,” Davies wrote in her resignation letter this week, adding that she had personally briefed the state on the well problem multiple times in 2015.

Davies wrote that resigning from her position is a huge loss, both professionally and personally. But, she continued, “I cannot work for a Department and an Administration that deliberately misleads the public.”

Meanwhile, the hundreds of families living near coal ash sites remain in limbo. The state says their water is fine, but levels of hexavalent chromium are still high, so residents are left to decide for themselves whether to drink the water or not. If they choose not to, Duke is still delivering bottled water every two weeks. But, according to a company spokesperson, it’s not because the water isn’t safe; they’re just being good neighbors.

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N.C. chief epidemiologist resigns over water safety squabble

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