Saturday, July 26, 2014
How much is enough?
Well if you are dumping coal ash into your local river, cleaning up 6% will get you a pat on the back if you are a major corporation like Duke Energy.
Nearly six months after a pipe at a defunct Duke Energy coal plant in Eden, North Carolina, leaked at least 30,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan River, environmentalists say Duke is walking away from its responsibility to clean up the waterway.So it has spread to thin along the river for a general cleanup but still poses a potential for local problems. Probably the first thing to do would be to secure the 14 other coal ash ponds Duke still has in the state before they get their chance to spill.
Earlier this month, the company announced that it had finished cleaning out the river, saying workers had removed 2,500 tons of coal ash — the toxic byproduct from coal-burning that contains heavy metals and arsenic. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has been overseeing the cleanup, approved Duke’s determination that the river was indeed clean.
But, even as North Carolina authorities said that the river is safe to swim in, North Carolina’s environmentalists have warned that the remaining coal ash still poses a threat.
“You don’t have to be an environmental scientist to realize that taking out less than 6 percent of the coal ash means you don’t have a clean river,” said Tiffany Haworth, director of the Dan River Basin Association. “We know the coal ash remains at the bottom of the river. So it depends on how you define ‘clean.’”
Federal and state authorities don't dispute that there are still tons of coal ash left in the Dan River, but ideas differ over what to do about it.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Post a Comment