After Toxic Ash Spill, Energy Company And Locals Struggle Over Solution
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Coal ash is the waste left over after utility companies burn coal to make electricity. For decades, the toxic stuff was buried in pits near power plants and covered with water. Now in North Carolina, it's become a multibillion-dollar problem. After a massive spill last year, the state ordered Duke Energy to clean up more than 100 million tons of coal ash. But as Dave DeWitt of member station WUNC reports, the cleanup plan isn't going over well with one community.
DAVE DEWITT, BYLINE: Lynn Petty, a retired postal worker here in Lee County, trudges through knee-high grass surrounding the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church. Behind the modest brick sanctuary, his ancestors are buried in the Carolina Clay
LYNN PETTY: Water comes down to here, won't soak in, makes a hole. Look. See what I'm saying? My daddy is buried right there. So I'm always here. I know this.
DEWITT: The nonabsorbent quality of the clay in the area is one reason Duke Energy and its contractor bought the abandoned Cherokee Clay and Brick mine across the road and another in the next county over. The plan is to dig up about 10 million tons of coal ash at 14 sites across the state and bring it here on trucks and rail cars to a dry-lined landfill. The clay, they say, adds another layer of protection against leaks. Petty just inherited 30 acres within sight of the mine, and he's afraid the coal ash means he'll never get to pass the land on to his children.
PETTY: To me, it's socioeconomic discrimination at the highest, because they brought all of this in and dumped it on a poor, black neighborhood when you got the governor and all these people staying in these big homes in cities like Raleigh and Charlotte. But they bring it here to a little, poor country place like this and dump it on us.
DEWITT: Duke Energy is the largest electric utility company in the country. After the spill last year that coated the Dan River in 70 miles of coal-ash slurry, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a first-ever statewide law requiring a coal ash cleanup effort. Jeff Brooks is a spokesman with Duke Energy. He says the two abandoned clay mines are crucial to that plan.
JEFF BROOKS: We've only got five years to move these high-priority sites - completely close these sites. And so we have to begin moving ash now. If we don't start with real applications that are available today, we'll never make that timeline.
DEWITT: Grassroots environmental groups and local residents are fighting back. They say coal ash is toxic and will harm drinking water, real estate values and economic development. They've held rallies and put pressure on local elected officials to file a lawsuit. Therese Vick is with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.
THERESE VICK: You know, Duke is smart. They've got a lot of engineers that work for them. This is a cheap and dirty, almost old-fashioned solution. And you're just moving a problem from one place to the other.
DEWITT: But that opinion is not universal among environmental groups. Frank Holleman is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center and is no friend to Duke Energy. He has sued the utility and the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources over coal ash.
FRANK HOLLEMAN: An old mine site which has already been disturbed could be a good place. And clay - water goes through it less easily than regular soil, so it can be even an extra protection. So that kind of approach can be a good approach.
DEWITT: Holleman says speed is the key, and leaving the coal ash where it is is not an option. By Duke Energy's own estimates, about 3 million gallons a day of tainted water seeps out of coal ash pits and into the state's rivers, lakes and drinking water.
HOLLEMAN: In effect, we're having a spill every day in North Carolina. All 14 of these sites are leaking, some of them staggeringly.
DEWITT: Duke Energy says it could start moving coal ash 60 days after the permits are approved by the state. For NPR News, I'm Dave DeWitt in Durham, N.C.
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