Protesters target Duke Energy's coal ashFeb 26 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Bruce Henderson The Charlotte Observer
Dozens of protesters chanting "Shame!" outside the Duke Energy Center Tuesday afternoon demanded that Duke remove the ash stored at its coal-fired power plants. Leaders of several environmental groups attempted to deliver anti-ash petitions they said were signed by 9,000 people. The petitions asked that Duke pay cleanup costs of its Feb. 2 ash spill on the Dan River without billing customers. Security guards initially blocked entrances to the building, the groups said, but a Duke representative eventually accepted the petitions. Duke CEO Lynn Good said last week that customers won't pay for the cleanup. The company has apologized for the spill of up to 39,000 tons of ash from its retired Dan River power plant in Eden. "Duke Energy has defiled the Dan River, and there is no apology that will fix that," Amy Adams of Boone-based Appalachian Voices told the crowd. The spill, she added, "was very preventable. It put corporate profit over human health." Ash has flowed 70 miles down the Dan River, federal officials say, and is nearly five feet deep at the spill site. A federal grand jury has launched a criminal investigation of the spill, aiming subpoenas at both Duke and its regulator, the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources. State lawmakers are also mulling changes to laws governing the ash ponds at 14 Duke retired or active power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency is poised to release the first federal rules on coal ash in December. Those rules could have prevented the Dan River spill, said Mary Anne Hitt, coal-campaign director for the Sierra Club. "This should be our last wake-up call," she said. http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=31646437& |