The real impact of coal ash on North Carolina’s communities | OPINION

In a recent Op-ed, "Duke Energy ratepayers are likely losers in DEQ decision,” April 8, a former Duke Energy environmental consultant shared a dangerously misleading take on coal ash’s impact on North Carolina’s environment and communities. We work first-hand on the effects of coal ash on WNC’s waters, and we believe it is part of our responsibility to set the record straight.

The author claims that coal ash is really not all that bad for the environment  – as he puts it, “the toxicity of coal ash is often exaggerated.” In fact, at Duke’s Cliffside power plant about an hour from Asheville, arsenic has been detected at levels 370 times higher than the state groundwater standard, thallium at levels nearly ten times higher and chromium at levels four times higher than the standard. The reality of coal ash pollution in our state is that concentrated toxic loads are leaching into the groundwater table and rivers in excess of background levels and the standards designed to protect human and aquatic health.

The author also argues that indefinitely polluting ground and surface water with coal ash will cause little harm to people or the environment. To the contrary, fish in the French Broad River were found to be contaminated by Duke’s coal ash near the Lake Julian plant, and a study of fish tissue samples in the Broad River led by Appalachian State Biology Professor Dr. Shea Tuberty and our own Broad Riverkeeper David Caldwell last year revealed that fish downstream from the Cliffside plant have highly elevated levels of selenium – a heavy metal that bioaccumulates in a manner similarly to mercury – compared to samples upstream from the plant. These fish are regularly consumed by people in the Cliffside community, and as Dr. Tuberty said at Cliffside’s coal ash input session in January: The truth is in the animals you’re eating.

Even Duke’s own studies disprove claims that coal ash contamination in the groundwater would eventually reach unharmful background levels. Duke’s projections show that their preferred cap-in-place method, which would simply place a cap on top of coal ash pits that are already leaking into the groundwater table, would continue to contaminate the groundwater in Cliffside at unsafe levels for at least the next 500 years.

The author concludes that “hybrid” solutions for dealing with coal ash should be considered, but these solutions amount to moving coal ash around within coal ash pits that would continue to seep into the groundwater table – ignoring the root of the problem. And the author’s math on the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from cleaning up coal ash is not only highly speculative – assuming 60-mile trips for each dump truck load, and that diesel is the only fuel that could be used to power these trips – but inaccurate. Cliffside, for instance, already has an onsite lined landfill that can accommodate excavated coal ash, and Duke’s own studies show that all of Duke’s other power plants in the state can accommodate onsite lined landfills so that the ash never has to leave the company’s property in order to be stored properly. Fundamentally, if Duke absorbs the true cost of burning coal to generate electricity and properly disposing of its toxic waste, it may drive the company away from doing the action that contributes most to greenhouse gas emissions – burning coal.

We could address other arguments from the Op-ed, but the bigger point is this: for years,  ratepayers from all over the state have made thousands upon thousands of public comments asking the state for this outcome.

The Department of Environmental Quality did its job by listening to the public and ordering the coal ash closure method that best protects the environment and the health of North Carolinians. Now, if this decision’s potential effect on ratepayers is a widespread concern, then North Carolina’s legislators should pass a bill to protect their constituents from bearing the full cost of coal ash excavation.

No part of DEQ’s decision calls for working families in North Carolina to bear the brunt of the costs, and we can all support legislation that protects constituents from footing the entire bill for the most powerful corporation in the state.

By Hartwell Carson, French Broad Riverkeeper; Gray Jernigan, Green Riverkeeper and David Caldwell, Broad Riverkeeper.