Coal ash worries run deep near shuttered Robeson County plant

Jul 6 - McClatchy-Tribune Content Agency, LLC - Michael Futch The Fayetteville Observer, N.C.

 

Clarence Davis used to swim in the canal that encircles the shuttered Duke Energy Weatherspoon Plant, cooling pond and coal ash pond.

In his younger days, he would ride four-wheelers over the facility's 55-acre coal ash basin. Initially toxic ash and sludge, over time the coal ash becomes firm, almost like dirt.

"It was thick enough to ride on. We'd do figure eights on it," Davis said. "We'd have that gray (ash) all in our nose, eyes."

Davis, who is 58, said he was unaware of any potential health hazards at the time. Environmentalists have since warned the toxic ash has been polluting rivers, streams and groundwater.

Davis, who farms for a living, lives in a 1920s wood-frame home no more than three-quarters of a mile from the coal ash pond, which clips his land. The canal, which also goes by the name Jacob's Swamp, runs by his property in the rural Burnt Islands area of Robeson County.

For 36 years, the plant's coal ash basin has sat there.

The water from the canal passes by the pond, and by the edge of his 43-acre farm, before entering the Lumber River.

"The swamp feeds right into the river. There's no acknowledgement from Duke of the vulnerability through the river from the swamp," said Mac Legerton, the executive director of the Center for Community Action in Lumberton. "It's not just the people who are exposed, but the animals and plants."

The private, nonprofit agency works in such areas as community development, grassroots leadership, policy advocacy, education improvement and reform, and environmental justice.

Duke Energy, the country's largest electric company, has said it will remove the coal ash stored at the Weatherspoon site, where contamination threatens wetlands, groundwater and the scenic Lumber River.

The waste product -- the coal ash, which is the residue of coal burned to produce power -- contains such toxic heavy metals as mercury, lead, arsenic, selenium, hexavalent chromium, thallium, vanadium and boron.

Last month, the Charlotte-based energy company announced it was expanding the number of coal-ash ponds it will close, adding another 12 to its list of sites designated for prompt attention. Most of those ash impoundments, including the one in Lumberton, are in eastern North Carolina.

"It's a blessing that it's happening for all of us," Davis said, "and for our children and grand kids and all those downstream."

As planned, the 1.5million tons of coal ash in Weatherspoon pond would go to a fully-lined structural fill in Lee County, according to Duke spokeswoman Zenica Chatman.

Legerton, who is a community ministry pastor, called the pending move of the coal ash a mixed blessing.

"Because we're glad and grateful over the fact the coal ash is going to be removed," he said. "But just dumping it in a large pit, lined, is not the solution."

Duke Energy says if regulators approve its plans, the company would excavate coal ash from 20 of its 32 pits in North Carolina. A state law passed a year ago requires the utility to close four high-priority sites by 2019 and all of them by 2029.

Currently, there is no timeline on when the coal ash will be removed from the Weatherspoon basin.

"There are a couple of different factors we have to consider as part of the overall process," Chatman said. "The mine, itself, where we're sending this won't be ready until sometime in 2016. In the meantime, we're submitting excavation plans to the state. We have not gotten the classification (priority) from the state on Weatherspoon. The classification will help determine or shape the timeline for Weatherspoon."

For 62 years, the Weatherspoon coal-fired power plant on the outskirts of Lumberton helped bring electric power to eastern North Carolina. But in 2011, Progress Energy retired the plant six years ahead of schedule, as the company prepared to comply with state and federal environmental regulations on emission reductions.

A year later, Duke Energy purchased Progress Energy.

Previously, the utility had said the plant would close by 2017 as part of a plan to retire nearly one-third of its coal-fired facilities in the state. Environmentalists and others say underground and surface supplies of water have been contaminated by the Duke Energy coal ash sites at its unlined waste storage facilities, which are held back by earthen dams.

Nick Wood, lead organizer at NC Warn, said a number of sites, including the utility company's coal ash basins at the Allen Steam Station in Belmont and H.F. Lee Plant in Goldsboro, have indicated the presence of contaminants in the drinking water.

NC Warn is an environmental justice nonprofit based in Durham.

Statewide, Wood said, "Ninety-five percent of the wells tested, the people living at those properties have gotten letters saying 'Do not drink the water.' Duke is providing one gallon of water per person per day for all their water needs."

The Weatherspoon site is one of 14 Duke Energy coal ash facilities in the state.

The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources has tested all 14 sites at Duke's expense, Wood said, but has only released the results from some of them.

"It's been very sporadic. It's coming out dribs and drabs," he said. "I'm pretty sure every site they've released, they've found stuff. The two big nasties are hexavalent chromium and vanadium -- two of the biggies very much associated with the coal combustion process. All the sites are different."

The public wasn't that knowledgeable about this issue until the Dan River spill in 2014, Legerton said.

The state's oversight of Duke's coal ash dumps fell under intense scrutiny following the, 2014, spill at one of the company's facilities in Eden. Nearly 40,000 tons of coal ash coated the Dan River from that plant.

The spill focused public and political attention on Duke's 130 million tons of coal ash and prompted an investigation by the state of all the company's coal ash pond dams, including the one at Weatherspoon.

Wood couldn't say specifically if the investigation turned up anything. Transparency, he said, has been a problem.

"We need more explanations from public officials on what is going on," he said. "It took a tragedy (the Dan River spill) to bring attention to very large problems that have been mounting for generations.

"Now we have the opportunity to do something about it," Wood said.

State law required that well testing around the ash impoundments be done because of the potential health concerns.

Property owners in the direct vicinity of the ash basins received notices in the mail, Wood said, which they were told to return to get their water evaluated.

"That's part of the reason we're not seeing such a huge number of the wells. Instead of being proactive, with Duke knocking on doors, people were sent something in the mail and not everybody has sent it back. But I think with added attention, more people are getting their wells tested."

Mike Rusher, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, said eight property owners' wells were identified for the testing of contaminants around the Weatherspoon plant. Results are unavailable for all eight, he said, adding there's a chance some will not be tested.

"There are issues on how far away from the plant" the testing should be done, Wood said. "Initially, they said 1,000 feet. There's talk of moving out 1,500 feet. There's talk of where (exactly) they're measuring from. The concerns from people are that there's not a magic number. 'What if I live 2,000 feet away?'"

At Weatherspoon, two wells exceeded state groundwater standards for pH, Rusher said.

"For Weatherspoon," he said, "three health risk evaluations were delivered. We got one health risk evaluation that came back with the listing of an OK recommendation to drink water. And one was ordered to be resampled. The order for resampling is not uncommon."

Davis, the farmer who lives near the site, said he was unaware of the coal ash issue until he attended a series of community meetings held in Lumberton last year organized by NC Warn.

"I learned at the meetings there was nothing there (at the Weatherspoon ash basin). No liner or clay bottom to the pond," he said. "Over the years, there has to have been seepage."

As a cool breeze blew through, Clarence Davis and three members of his family stood, overlooking the canal just outside the Weatherspoon plant site. The vegetation was thick on the other side of the bank, making it difficult to reach the coal ash pond.

"It's like a jungle," said Will Davis, Clarence's 37-year-old son.

The canal is about 20 feet wide, with stands of maple, gum and pine along the banks casting shadows over the murky, tea-colored water. From that spot, the Lumber River is no more than three-quarters of a mile.

To reach this edge of the elder Davis' land, visitors drive along a grassy, dirt road that passes soybean fields before reaching an end at a family cemetery.

Entrance into the Weatherspoon plant off N.C. 72 is restricted.

Will Davis, his wife, Sherry, and their son, Jared, make their home beside the family patriarch on Beulah Church Road. Clarence Davis estimated 175 people live within close proximity of the pond.

"My concern when I found out about all the chemicals and toxic stuff -- I wanted to do something about it so my grandson (Jared) and others wouldn't have to deal with it," he said. "It's just a blessing that Duke Energy realized they had a problem so future generations won't have to worry about it."

Although it cannot be linked directly to the hazardous ash, Clarence Davis said his son was diagnosed with leukemia right out of high school.

Jared's mother, Sherry, said she has her own concerns about living so close to the coal ash basin.

"You never know what the consequences are," she said, while walking between rows of soybeans. "I don't need to worry about it: I'll be dead. But we do need to worry about it because it affects our children."

Ervin Hayes, who lives in Fairmont, farms about 59 acres north of the Weatherspoon plant.

"When the water backed up in the fall of 2009," the 78-year-old Hayes said, "it came back up the creek (canal). A lot of fish were dead in the creek. All kind of fish and muskrats, dead in that creek, from the bridge going down to the power plant. That water on that farm backed up. That swamp was slam full of water, and my pond was broken."

Hayes said he has problems with 10 acres of the land.

"The damage is already in the land over there," he said. "Last year, I got nothing on the soybeans. Sorriest crop I ever had. I don't know if coal ash was floating in the air when I run it, or what happened to it, but I sprayed my soybeans with water from the creek (canal). I didn't make a crop over there last year."

He started tending the farmland in 1983. Coal ash, he said, would coat the tractor about every spring and fall while he was working the land.

"The coal ash would get into your lungs, and I'd have to go in the house because it was burning," he said. "When I'd be there, that coal ash (would) be rolling in the wind. There'd be a mess on you when you were suckering tobacco."

When disposed, coal ash dust is emitted into the air by loading and unloading, transport and wind, according to the medical and public health group Physicians for Social Responsibility. Once in the air, it can migrate off-site as "fugitive dust."

Legerton, of the Center for Community Action, said most people remain unaware of the potential dangers of coal ash. He compared the educational process to the public's slow grasp of the potential health problems associated with cigarettes.

"People are becoming more aware and consumers are getting more involved because it relates to our health and well being," Legerton said, while overlooking the canal that goes round the closed plant. "Rural places should be the least affected places, but often they're more polluted. Out of sight, out of mind."

Staff writer Michael Futch can be reached at futchm@fayobserver.com or 486-3529.

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