What's next? Getting Duke Energy to clean its mess
Published March 12, 2015
Editorial by Burlington Times-News, March 11, 2015.
What took so long?
That’s only the first question raised by the announcement on Tuesday that the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources is fining Duke Energy $25 million — not for the massive coal ash spill into the Dan River in nearby Rockingham County — but for years of pollution from two coal ash pits at a former power plant near Wilmington.
In announcing what it called the largest penalty ever imposed by the state for environmental damages, state regulators with DENR acknowledged that toxic pollutants from unlined dumps have been seeping into the groundwater for years from the L.V. Sutton Electric Plant in southeastern North Carolina. In fact, state environmental officials could pin it down with even more precision. According to the Associated Press, monitoring wells near the two dumps showed levels exceeding state standards of thallium and other chemicals. Of that lot, though, thallium was the most troubling. It was an active ingredient in rat poison until it was banned for its toxicity.
For those who missed it just now, that’s too toxic for use as rat poison.
And apparently there’s a lot of it. According to the state, Duke allowed thallium to “leach into groundwater at the Sutton facility for 1,668 days.”
While DENR hailed this week’s action as an aggressive move in handling the coal ash issue, history indicates otherwise. For those outside looking in, the appearance is that coal ash was barely on the state’s radar screen until the incident outside Eden in February 2014, when tons of toxic coal ash poured into the Dan River, coating the river bottom for up to 70 miles, claiming or endangering wildlife, and threatening public drinking water in Danville, Va. After this catastrophic incident, heavy pressure from the public and environmentalists forced the state to study Duke Energy’s 32 coal ash dumps scattered at 14 sites across the state. As a result, and after seemingly endless discussion, the General Assembly approved legislation late in 2014 requiring the utility to dig up or cap its coal ash dumps by 2029.
In addition, a federal probe recently led to criminal charges against Duke in connection to leaking coal ash dumps. U.S. Attorneys say the nation’s largest electricity company engaged in unlawful dumping in violation of the Clean Water Act at coal-fired power plants in Eden, Moncure, Asheville, Goldsboro and Mount Holly. Under a plea agreement, Duke has consented to an admission of guilt and paying $102 million in fines, restitution and community service. The company has vowed that shareholders, not customers, will absorb the cost.
Now comes another heavy fine, which also didn’t satisfy environmental groups who say that DENR took no action for years regarding coal ash dumps even though they were aware of the contamination problems. Legal action by the Southern Environmental Law Center in 2013 forced the state’s hand.
They want Duke Energy to be forced to clean up the mess it made — and in many ways was allowed to make. After all, they say, writing a check for a company like Duke Energy is relatively simple. Cleaning up is the hard part.
For the sake of future generations, ensuring that Duke Energy cleans up these sites would be a wise course.
