Environmental accountability at stake

Editorial by Burlington Times-News, February 17, 2014.

Federal prosecutors are looking into the massive toxic coal ash spill in the Dan River, fishing for possible criminal activity by the utility and state regulators. Meanwhile on Monday, state lawmakers cranked up their own round of questions about what led to the catastrophic spill that is being measured by the ton and in which testing finds high levels of arsenic in the water.

That is as it should be. Because while the spill seemingly impacts just those along the North Carolina and Virginia border — where people are under warning not to swim or fish in the tainted water — the larger truth is much more sobering. In fact, everyone in the state should be paying close attention.

This coal-ash pond in Eden is one of many where power companies like Duke Energy have stored waste. Now, legislators are asking why Duke maintains coal-ash ponds in North Carolina when it uses dry storage with pollution liners elsewhere. Efforts to force Duke to replace these sites in North Carolina may be gaining steam.

Finally.

In another larger truth, state lawmakers should have been asking this question for a long time. Indeed, this story points back to failures by state leaders. Coal-ash ponds didn’t appear overnight.

Early media reports focus on Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, a former Duke employee who received substantial campaign contributions from the company. But the federal subpoena issued by U.S. Attorney Tommy Walker last week, seeks Duke-DENR correspondence going back to January 2010, long before McCrory was elected, when Democrats had controlled the state regulatory apparatus for many years.

In fact, McCrory has called for a tough line with Duke in recent days. His legal team killed a settlement deal between Duke and DENR that they recognized was too favorable to the company without sufficiently protecting natural resources.

In the General Assembly, State Senate Rules Chairman Tom Apodaca and House Environment Committee Vice-Chairman Chuck McGrady say they will co-sponsor a bill seeking the removal of coal ash dumps. Besides the Eden facility, Duke has 30 other dumps across the state, most located near lakes and rivers, the Associated Press reported.

“We’ve got the Duke facility in Arden sitting up here with 91 acres of coal ash, and it has always bothered me,” Apodaca told the Associated Press. “When I saw the Dan River thing, I said ‘We’ve got to do something.’ We’ve got to get a date certain. We can’t keep kicking this down the road.”

Monday is a beginning. The General Assembly’s Environmental Review Commission hearing was set to update  legislators about the Dan River cleanup effort of the third-largest coal ash spill in U.S. history. Also on the agenda is how the DENR handled public notification procedures following the waste treatment spill in Burlington last month. It was heartening on Monday to see DENR officials admit to lawmakers that its staff erred in advising Burlington to postpone notifying the public about a spill that at 3.5 million gallons is the largest in city history.

Hopefully, a lesson was learned in that case. Accountability is important.

As for Duke Energy’s coal ash problems, well, we hope our leaders take this opportunity to make Duke clean up its act.