West Virginia residents are still dealing with the aftermath of a dirty coal spill polluting their drinking water, and now a Duke Energy coal ash spill is contaminating water in Virginia.
Water in West Virginia still hasn’t recovered from the foaming agent that spilled into the Elk River, polluting the water supply in nine counties. Now North Carolina’s Duke Energy is reporting a coal ash spill into the Dan River. The spill is yet another reminder that clean coal is a dirty lie.
82,000 pounds of toxic sludge from the Duke Energy coal ash spill is moving toward the Gason Reservoir, located near the North Carolina and Virginia borders. That reservoir serves Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, and Norfolk.
Authorities are saying that there’s no immediate threat from this spill, but they are warning folks not to consume fish from the river.
So, if there’s no immediate danger, what’s the problem?
The larger issue here is that Duke Energy’s coal ash storage is very unstable. There’s little infrastructure preventing another spill like this. Environmental groups want Duke to drain its existing storage ponds and move the toxic coal ash to safer storage locations, but of course the energy company doesn’t want to do the expensive thing when they can “study the situation.”
Our sister site – CleanTechnica – did a piece on lawmakers’s reactions to the Duke Energy coal ash spill, and it’s definitely worth a read. You can check it out in full below.
{Image Credit: Duke Energy Plant photo via Shutterstock}
North Carolina Locks Barn Door After Coal Ash Escapes (via Clean Technica)
We’ve been following the coal ash disposal issue ever since the massive Emory River coal ash spill of 2010 (remember that?) in Tennessee, which triggered a flurry of regulatory proposals that have pretty much gone nowhere. That all might be about…
