SELC: 94 percent of Duke Energy coal ash still in Dan River

8/5/2014

SELC: 94 percent of Duke Energy coal ash still in Dan River - The Daily Progress: News

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

SELC: 94 percent of Duke Energy coal ash still in Dan River

Posted: Monday, July 21, 2014 9:15 pm | Updated: 9:46 pm, Mon Jul 21, 2014.

BY JOHN R. CRANE Danville Register & Bee

DANVILLE — A Charlottesville-based environmental group has criticized Duke Energy following its clean-up of a 2,500-ton coal ash deposit at Schoolfield Dam, saying the company has not accounted for the remainder of its 39,000-ton coal ash spill into the Dan River.

"Where are the other 37,000 tons?" said Kathleen Sullivan, senior communications manager for the Southern Environmental Law Center, in an email to the Danville Register & Bee last week. "They have not accounted for 94 percent of the coal-ash waste spilled into the Dan River. Duke has removed about 6 percent of the coal-ash waste it spilled and at just two places: at the spill site itself and the Danville dam. It is hard to believe that the coal ash hasn't collected elsewhere in places in the river where it could be removed."

Calling the cleanup of Schoolfield Dam an important milestone, Duke Energy Spokesman Jeff Brooks said the company will continue monitoring and evaluating the Dan River, including sediments.

"While we have completed those projects [Schoolfield and the Town Creek site two miles downstream of Duke's old Dan River Steam Station in Eden, North Carolina, where the Feb. 2 spill occurred] and removal of material, we are far from complete in our monitoring work at the river," Brooks said during an interview Monday.

The company will work to determine whether deposits meet criteria for removal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and whether removal of the material would cause more harm than benefit to the environment, Brooks said.

"That work is going to continue for many months," Brooks added. "Duke Energy is not going anywhere. We are going to remain on the river and committed to the river for the foreseeable future."

Duke announced last week that the company had completed its clean-up of the coal-ash deposit near Schoolfield Dam. Dredging, which was performed by Phillips and Jordan of Knoxville, Tennessee, began on May 12 and took about two months.

The company recently completed clean-up of a 258-ton coal-ash deposit where Town Creek meets the Dan River in Eden. Material from both sites has been taken to the Upper Piedmont landfill in Person County, North Carolina, for storage.

Myles Bartos, an EPA official in charge of overseeing coal-ash cleanup near the dam, told Danville City Council last week that the Dan River has returned to normal. Bartos said more than 600 water samples have been taken from the river since the spill and all tests have shown consistently safe drinking water and a quick return to normal levels of chemicals.

The Southern Environmental Law Center's email said Duke is incapable of removing all the coal ash and its pollutants, and that it's "more important than ever to remove the coal ash from all 14 waterfront sites in North Carolina and move it to safe, dry, lined storage." Also, studies from Duke University have shown that coal ash and its heavy metals will enter into the water from sediments in hot weather and "when conditions are right."

"Also, it will get stirred up when there is a flood," Sullivan said in the email.

Brooks acknowledged the Dan River is powerful and carries the potential for stirred-up pollutants, "but that's why we're monitoring the river so closely and why we've conducted monitoring and modeling."

"Should we see a deposit change and meet the criteria for removal, we would absolutely take action," Brooks said.

said. "But we're not seeing that now."

Duke has taken more than 2,000 surface and drinking water samples in the Dan River since the Feb. 2 spill, Brooks said.

"We will continue to let science drive our operations and we'll continue to take the actions with the EPA we believe help to protect the river and address this issue in the most environmentally sensitive way possible," he added.

Brooks said he understood the desire to have all the coal ash removed, but extracting all of it "may not be the best option for the river."

Frank Holleman, Southern Environmental Law Center senior attorney, said the organization will be pressing as hard as possible to get Duke to clean up its coal-ash sites across North Carolina. The law center is representing several environmental groups in court to make Duke clean up its coal-ash pollution from its old Dan River Steam Station in Eden, including the Dan River Basin Association, Roanoke River Basin Association, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Waterkeeper Alliance.

The Dan River Basin Association and the Roanoke River Basin Association will monitor the river, looking for coal ash collection that should be brought before the EPA's attention, Holleman said.

The Southern Environmental Law Center will be watching what state and federal governments do "to ensure that Duke is appropriately penalized and pays the public for what it has done, for the consequences of the spill," Holleman said.

The biggest priority is for everyone to make sure Duke cleans up those sites and gets the ash out of these old lagoons and moves it to safe, lined storage away from the rivers, Holleman said.

Another spill could occur in the Dan River and Duke has failed to clean up the coal ash from the old Dan River Steam Station, Holleman said.

"You would think it [cleanup at the Dan River Steam Station] would have happened by now," Holleman said.

Danville Register & Bee staff writer Denice Thibodeau contributed to this story.