Environmental officials in North Carolina say their tests show that coal ash released from Duke Energy’s Sutton power plant in Wilmington during flooding from Hurricane Florence has not had a negative impact on the Cape Fear River.
The state’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) on October 4 said its test results on water samples collected on four different days following the hurricane aligned with results from Duke Energy’s water tests.
Paige Sheehan, a Duke Energy spokeswoman, in a statement said the state’s test results show “that Cape Fear River quality is not harmed by Sutton plant operations.” A DEQ spokeswoman said the state did find slightly elevated levels of copper in the river, but said they are not a threat to public health.
The groups said their tests showed arsenic levels 71 times higher than North Carolina’s drinking water standard.
The Sutton plant today is a 625-MW natural gas combined cycle plant that came online in 2013.
The site is home, though, to dumps storing coal ash, which is residue left behind after coal is burned.
Duke Energy has been excavating millions of tons of ash from the old waste dumps at the Sutton site and moving it to a lined landfill.
Disposing of coal ash close to waterways is hazardous, and Duke Energy compounds the problem by leaving most of its ash in primitive unlined pits filled with water.” Holleman later said, “When a hurricane like Florence hits, we have to hope and pray that our communities do not suffer the consequences of years of irresponsible coal ash practices by the coal ash utilities.” Duke in February of this year, in its annual financial report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, said it had resolved a series of legal actions stemming from a coal ash spill into the Dan River in North Carolina in February 2014.
North Carolina regulators earlier this year said Duke could pass most of the costs of cleaning up the utility’s coal ash operations to ratepayers, though the state Utilities Commission assessed a $30 million “mismanagement penalty” on the company.
—Darrell Proctor is a POWER associate editor (@DarrellProctor1, @POWERmagazine).