Duke Energy's coal ash ponds in Chatham County under scrutiny
An aerial photo taken by Riverkeeper Rick Dove on March 10 over the coal ash impoundments at the Duke Energy Cape Fear Plant show personnel using a portable pump.
The Waterkeeper Alliance environmental group flew a plane over Duke Energy’s Cape Fear Plant ponds in Chatham County March 10 and spotted two pumps. Duke says routine maintenance was underway.
- An aerial photo taken by Riverkeeper Rick Dove on March 10 shows coal ash impoundments at the Duke Energy Cape Fear Plant. The Cape Fear River is in the upper right of the photo.
An aerial photo taken by Riverkeeper Rick Dove on March 10 shows coal ash impoundments at the Duke Energy Cape Fear Plant.
RALEIGH
State environmental regulators are investigating whether Duke Energy has been pumping toxic coal-ash wastewater into the Cape Fear River in Chatham County.
Officials with the Charlotte-based utility deny any wrongdoing and say workers have been lowering the level of two ponds at the closed plant to conduct routine maintenance. Such pumping is allowed so long as the utility monitors the water to make sure it is safe. Duke says it has been working on the project since last fall and notified the state about its plans in August.
A spokesman for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources said Monday the agency is checking to see whether it was informed and is still investigating whether the discharge was toxic.
State regulators found the pumping when they visited the site near Moncure on March 11 as part of a week devoted to conducting intensive inspections at all of Duke Energy’s sites in the state. The inspections come after a massive coal ash spill into the Dan River in February.
The inspectors found one of two pumps the company was using and saw that the level of the ponds had dropped, said Drew Elliot, the agency’s communications director. Inspectors spent all day at the site’s five coal ash ponds but didn’t finish their work, which entails hauling equipment over forested land and researching records, he said. Inspectors plan to return to the site on Tuesday.
Elliot said routine maintenance is allowed under the utility’s permit, but he added that discharging untreated wastewater could be a violation. Duke has stopped pumping the water, he said.
The Cape Fear River provides drinking water for Sanford, Dunn and Fayetteville, among other places.
Waterkeepers find 2 pumps
Elliot said DENR’s inspection was independent of an environmental group’s discovery of the two pumps at two ponds on March 10.
That’s when Waterkeeper Alliance flew a plane over the ponds and spotted the two pumps, which it documented in photographs provided to reporters.
The environmental group has investigated 20 coal ash ponds in five states, and claims almost 80 percent of the time it found illegal pollution of waterways, said Donna Lisenby, the group’s global coal campaign coordinator.
On Thursday, members of the organization took a small motor boat up the Cape Fear River and a tributary trying to find where the pumps were discharging and to test the water.
The group was turned back by Duke employees and a Chatham County sheriff’s deputy.
Waterkeeper Alliance is one of four environmental groups that prompted DENR to file lawsuits against Duke Energy over the coal ash stored in ponds at 14 sites in North Carolina. It contends the state agency hasn’t been aggressive in regulating the utility.
Waterkeeper officials speculate Duke might be motivated to reduce the amount of wastewater that has to be treated, thereby saving money. Last week Duke said it would accelerate removing water from all its ash ponds, as part of its long-range plan to contain and make safe the storage of the material.
Lisenby said DENR should make public whatever monitoring results it has from the pumps, but she thinks she knows what tests will show. “We’re very confident that Duke was pumping concentrated, untreated coal ash water,” she said.
Duke spokeswoman Erin Culbert disagrees.
“Discharges from those permitted outfalls are monitored and continued to be monitored throughout the process,” Culbert said. “We were continuing to meet permit limits to protect water quality throughout the process.”
EPA rates as ‘poor’
The maintenance work was being done on vertical pipes called “risers” that extend above the level of the wastewater in the ponds and send spillover into the discharge system. The coal ash is supposed to remain settled on the bottom of the ponds.
The company is allowed to discharge some amount of that wastewater into the rivers next to the plants but must monitor it to make sure it is safe.
The Cape Fear plant was a coal-fired operation that ran for 89 years, until it closed in 2012.
State environmental regulators are investigating whether Duke Energy has been pumping toxic coal-ash wastewater into the Cape Fear River in Chatham County.
Officials with the Charlotte-based utility deny any wrongdoing and say workers have been lowering the level of two ponds at the closed plant to conduct routine maintenance. Such pumping is allowed so long as the utility monitors the water to make sure it is safe. Duke says it has been working on the project since last fall and notified the state about its plans in August.
A spokesman for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources said Monday the agency is checking to see whether it was informed and is still investigating whether the discharge was toxic.
State regulators found the pumping when they visited the site near Moncure on March 11 as part of a week devoted to conducting intensive inspections at all of Duke Energy’s sites in the state. The inspections come after a massive coal ash spill into the Dan River in February.
The inspectors found one of two pumps the company was using and saw that the level of the ponds had dropped, said Drew Elliot, the agency’s communications director. Inspectors spent all day at the site’s five coal ash ponds but didn’t finish their work, which entails hauling equipment over forested land and researching records, he said. Inspectors plan to return to the site on Tuesday.
Elliot said routine maintenance is allowed under the utility’s permit, but he added that discharging untreated wastewater could be a violation. Duke has stopped pumping the water, he said.
The Cape Fear River provides drinking water for Sanford, Dunn and Fayetteville, among other places.
Waterkeepers find 2 pumps
Elliot said DENR’s inspection was independent of an environmental group’s discovery of the two pumps at two ponds on March 10.
That’s when Waterkeeper Alliance flew a plane over the ponds and spotted the two pumps, which it documented in photographs provided to reporters.
The environmental group has investigated 20 coal ash ponds in five states, and claims almost 80 percent of the time it found illegal pollution of waterways, said Donna Lisenby, the group’s global coal campaign coordinator.
On Thursday, members of the organization took a small motor boat up the Cape Fear River and a tributary trying to find where the pumps were discharging and to test the water.
The group was turned back by Duke employees and a Chatham County sheriff’s deputy.
Waterkeeper Alliance is one of four environmental groups that prompted DENR to file lawsuits against Duke Energy over the coal ash stored in ponds at 14 sites in North Carolina. It contends the state agency hasn’t been aggressive in regulating the utility.
Waterkeeper officials speculate Duke might be motivated to reduce the amount of wastewater that has to be treated, thereby saving money. Last week Duke said it would accelerate removing water from all its ash ponds, as part of its long-range plan to contain and make safe the storage of the material.
Lisenby said DENR should make public whatever monitoring results it has from the pumps, but she thinks she knows what tests will show. “We’re very confident that Duke was pumping concentrated, untreated coal ash water,” she said.
Duke spokeswoman Erin Culbert disagrees.
“Discharges from those permitted outfalls are monitored and continued to be monitored throughout the process,” Culbert said. “We were continuing to meet permit limits to protect water quality throughout the process.”
EPA rates as ‘poor’
The maintenance work was being done on vertical pipes called “risers” that extend above the level of the wastewater in the ponds and send spillover into the discharge system. The coal ash is supposed to remain settled on the bottom of the ponds.
The company is allowed to discharge some amount of that wastewater into the rivers next to the plants but must monitor it to make sure it is safe.
The Cape Fear plant was a coal-fired operation that ran for 89 years, until it closed in 2012.
Federal grand jury looks into Duke Energy spill
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Posted 4:05 a.m. todayRALEIGH, N.C. — A federal grand jury convened Tuesday as part of a widening criminal investigation triggered by the massive Duke Energy coal ash spill that coated 70 miles of the Dan River with toxic sludge.
The session at the federal courthouse in Raleigh comes as environmental groups amp up pressure on regulators and lawmakers to force Duke to clean up the leaky, unlined ash pits polluting North Carolina's waterways. Prosecutors have issued at least 23 grand jury subpoenas to Duke executives and state officials.
Other political corruption investigations have taken months or years before going before a grand jury, but U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker chose to present information to a grand jury upfront rather than wait for investigators to compile the details.
Walker declined to comment, citing the secrecy of grand jury proceedings.
The subpoenas seek records from Duke, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the state Utilities Commission. They include reams of documents, including emails, memos and reports, related to the Feb. 2 spill into the Dan River and the state's oversight of the company's nearly three dozen other coal ash dumps spread out at 14 current and retired power plants.
The first batch of subpoenas was issued Feb. 10, the day after an Associated Press story raised questions about whether North Carolina regulators had helped shield Duke from a coalition of environmental groups that wanted to sue under the U.S. Clean Water Act to force the company to clean up its coal ash pollution.
Their efforts were stymied by the state environmental agency, which used its authority under the federal act to intervene. The state quickly proposed what environmentalists derided as a "sweetheart deal" where the $50 billion Charlotte-based company would have paid $99,111 to settle violations over toxic groundwater leeching from two of its plants with no requirement that it stop the pollution.
That proposed settlement was put on hold indefinitely after last month's spill.
DENR spokesman Jamie Kritzer declined to comment beyond saying the agency is cooperating with the federal probe. Duke officials took a similar position.
Environmentalists had long complained about the level of coordination between Duke and North Carolina's regulators and lawmakers.
Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, worked for Duke for more than 28 years before retiring to campaign for the state's highest elected post.
"Duke has been polluting for decades, and they've known they're polluting for decades, and they're simply allowed to act above the law," said Peter Harrison, an attorney with Waterkeeper Alliance, and environmental group that was demonstrating outside the federal courthouse.
"The state has also known about Duke's illegal pollution for years, and they haven't done anything and we're talking about crimes now," Harrison said
