In January it was the toxic contamination of the Elk River in West Virginia that shut down the water supply to 300,000 people in the Charleston area. Last month it was the heavy metal, toxic chemical carcinogens that spewed into the Dan River in North Carolina from which we are still accessing the negative impact.
Is South Carolina next for a major contamination of a waterway?
The Dan River toxins came from the Duke Energy coal ash pond and a broken storm water pipe. Both Duke and SCE&G have coal ash ponds in South Carolina that pose a clear threat.
Below is a Greenville News story that points out that our Saluda River and all the communities that get their drinking water from the river and farmers who use it for agricultural irrigation or citizens who enjoy recreational activities on the river should be very concerned.
The West Virginia spill cost that areas $61 million in just one week. We can’t afford the same in South Carolina.
The Greenville News
February 25, 2014
NC cleanup raises concerns for S.C. Saluda River
Duke reviewing coal ash storage at Lee
by Eric Conner
The storage of decades of toxic byproducts in ponds at an aging Upstate coal plant has environmentalists concerned that failure of dams holding back coal ash could lead to disastrous pollution along the Saluda River.
The concerns at Duke Energy’s soon-to-be-retired W.S. Lee coal plant in Williamston arise as the company faces a huge cleanup effort in North Carolina, where this month a popular recreational river was contaminated after the utility said faulty pipes caused more than 30 tons of coal ash to spill.
Duke is reviewing its storage of coal ash following the Dan River incident, company spokesman Ryan Mosier said.
“We agree that coal ash basins must be addressed, and we’re taking another look at the best way to do that,” Mosier said. “There’s a lot of eyes on Dan River, and we’ve got to see what kind of guidance comes out of that.”
The coal ash ponds over 64 acres at Lee are held back by dams that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said pose a “significant safety hazard” and have showed signs of seepage over the past several years.
Duke maintains that the dams are safe, but environmental groups have called on the company to remove coal ash from its two South Carolina plants and dispose of it in dry landfills safe from waterways.
“They’re essentially hazardous waste dumps,” said Ulla Reeves, the director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s high-risk energy program.
“They’re regulated less stringently than household garbage disposal. Dan River really should be the last straw. Duke Energy really needs to step up.”
The Lee plant has burned coal for more than 60 years, though Duke says it is scheduled to wind down coal operations next year and expected eventually to switch to natural gas.
The byproducts of burning coal create ash that contains toxins dangerous to human health and the environment, according to the EPA.
The ash at Lee is stored in ponds constructed in 1974 that use two dams to contain contaminants, according to an EPA study commissioned in 2010 to study coal ash storage at the Lee plant.
The EPA ordered the study following a dam failure in Kingston, Tenn., in 2008 that resulted in the worst coal ash disaster in U.S. history.
In the 2010 report, engineers with GEI Consultants found evidence of water seepage at one of the Lee dams and suggested better oversight.
After the report, the EPA classified the Lee coal ash storage as posing a “significant safety hazard” if the dams were to fail because of factors such as water infiltration or seismic activity.
In response to the report a year later, Duke wrote that it considered the engineers’ findings to be “minor performance deficiencies” and that it would develop a seepage monitoring program.
The Dan River incident on Feb. 2 was the result of faulty stormwater pipes that have since been repaired, Mosier said. The company, he said, had been inspecting the Lee storage ponds before the Dan River spill.
However, Reeves said, just because there has been no failure at Lee “doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.”
A concern besides dam failure is that the earth beneath the ponds aren’t lined, potentially leaving groundwater exposed to contaminants, a long-term problem that needs to be cleaned up, Reeves said.
“They need to clean up their ash,” she said. “It really is as simple as that. They need to get their wet ash out of these unlined impoundments. They’re on waterways that people rely on for recreation, for drinking water, for all kinds of services we need to live our daily life.”
The EPA earlier this year announced a year-end deadline to draw up the first-ever regulations to dispose of coal ash.
The EPA ordered the study following a dam failure in Kingston, Tenn., in 2008 that resulted in the worst coal ash disaster in U.S. history.
In the 2010 report, engineers with GEI Consultants found evidence of water seepage at one of the Lee dams and suggested better oversight.
After the report, the EPA classified the Lee coal ash storage as posing a “significant safety hazard” if the dams were to fail because of factors such as water infiltration or seismic activity.
In response to the report a year later, Duke wrote that it considered the engineers’ findings to be “minor performance deficiencies” and that it would develop a seepage monitoring program.
The Dan River incident on Feb. 2 was the result of faulty stormwater pipes that have since been repaired, Mosier said. The company, he said, had been inspecting the Lee storage ponds before the Dan River spill.
However, Reeves said, just because there has been no failure at Lee “doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.”
A concern besides dam failure is that the earth beneath the ponds aren’t lined, potentially leaving groundwater exposed to contaminants, a long-term problem that needs to be cleaned up, Reeves said.
“They need to clean up their ash,” she said. “It really is as simple as that. They need to get their wet ash out of these unlined impoundments. They’re on waterways that people rely on for recreation, for drinking water, for all kinds of services we need to live our daily life.”
The EPA earlier this year announced a year-end deadline to draw up the first-ever regulations to dispose of coal ash.