Legislature passes bill on coal ash cleanup; Duke Energy free to leave ash in place indefinitely

Press release from N.C. Conservation Network:

RALEIGH – The NC House of Representatives approved a coal ash bill that environmentalists are describing as a bailout and a giveaway to Duke Energy, which will no longer be required to excavate toxic coal ash from all of its waste sites across the state.

H630 was approved in a concurrence vote Thursday evening. The bill takes the unprecedented step of requiring Duke to provide clean drinking water to residents living within a half mile of its coal ash waste dumps — a provision which amounts to an acknowledgment from legislators that leaving coal ash in leaking pits poses serious risks to people around it.

Concern for residents in coal ash territory did not extend any further, however, as H630 builds in mechanisms that will allow Duke to leave its toxic ash next to many of these residences indefinitely. So long as drinking water and some dam safety concerns are addressed, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will be required to classify several sites as “low-risk,” a classification that allows Duke to simply cap the coal ash pits in place.

The bill appears to ignore the pleas of thousands of citizens who participated in good faith throughout a comment period established after the Dan River coal ash spill in 2014. Overwhelmingly, public commenters were in favor of a full clean up, or excavation, of all waste sites. Groundwater contamination has been confirmed at every coal ash site, and many residential drinking wells suffer from high levels of hexavalent chromium, vanadium, arsenic, and other poisonous compounds found in coal ash.

“Sadly, the passage of this bill shows that Duke Energy has regained its ownership of the government of North Carolina,” said Peter Harrision,  a staff attorney for the Waterkeeper Alliance. “The law provides an opportunity for Gov. McCrory to prove his loyalty to his former employer by letting Duke leave more than 80 million tons of coal ash in unlined pits across the state, where it will continue to leak toxic pollution into our lakes, rivers, and groundwater for generations to come.”

“This bill wipes away two years of work documenting actual risks at sites across the state and replaces science with Duke Energy’s wish list.” said Yadkin Riverkeeper Will Scott. “Burying ash in unlined pits  won’t stop the 70,000 gallons of contaminated groundwater that leach off Duke’s site into the Yadkin River every day.  The only thing being compromised here is water in rivers and drinking water reservoirs across the state.”

“H630 is just a giveaway to Duke Energy,” said Matthew Starr, Upper Neuse Riverkeeper. “Providing clean water to the residents whose water you contaminated is good, but it doesn’t improve the risk to ground and surface water posed by these ash pits.”

“For years, we have heard that this issue needs to be left up to scientists and engineers,” said Catawba Riverkeeper Sam Perkins. “We now know from data in Duke’s own site assessments that capping these unlined mounds of ash in place — much of which sits below the water table — will continue to mean groundwater contamination leaving Duke’s property for years to come. The common sense solution of moving coal ash away from water to a lined site is what we need to protect waterways. We have the science and engineering reports, and the time to act is now, not in another 18 months. Even if Duke runs water to homes, groundwater cannot be allowed to continue polluting the environment, nor can the risk of catastrophic failure be allowed to loom high on the banks upstream of drinking water intakes.”