Wet
coal ash is seen on someone’s hand next to the Dan River, which flows
through North Carolina and Virginia. Duke Energy spilled 30,000 tons of
it upstream.
Gerry Broome/AP
By
Staff writer
March 30, 2014
..."This place was where I first knew God was real," (click here) Mr. Adkins drawls, gazing down at a narrow segment of the river known as Draper Landing. That's where he learned to fish and swim as a boy, where he first felt a spiritual connection to nature, he says. Gesturing toward his 2-year-old son, Benson, he adds, "I was planning on teaching him how to fish and swim right here, too.
"Now, I wouldn't let my dog come in here," Adkins adds.
Less than two months earlier, a storm pipe underneath an unlined coal ash basin two miles upstream from Draper Landing ruptured and spewed more than 30,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan. The plume of gray sludge spread 70 miles downstream, depositing toxins along the way....
Duke
Energy engineers and contractors survey the site of a coal ash spill at
the Dan River Power Plant in Eden, N.C., in February.(Photo: AP)
Coal ash (click here) is the byproduct from burning coal to produce electricity. The material contains arsenic, selenium, mercury and other pollutants — all harmful to people and wildlife when found in high concentrations.
The challenge for power providers is how to store it. For decades, utilities often stored the material in large ponds where it was mixed with water. But pollutants can leach into groundwater and rivers. The ponds themselves also can fail. In 2008, a dike broke at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant, spilling 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash.
