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Duke Energy said Saturday night that heavy rains in Florence caused the collapse of a slope in a coal ash dump at a closed power plant near the North Carolina coast.
Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said about 1,530 cubic meters of ash had been moved to the L.V. power plant. Sutton, near Wilmington, and that the contaminated runoff probably had sank in the cooling pond of the factory. The company has not yet determined whether the weir draining the lake was open or whether contamination could have spilled into the Cape Fear River. That's about enough ash to fill 180 dump trucks.
Florence hit the coast of North Carolina as a big hurricane Friday, spilling nearly 1 meter of rain and swelling the rivers of the region. The resulting floods forced the rescue of the living waters and caused several deaths.
Sheehan said the company had reported the incident to state and federal regulatory authorities "by caution".
The Sutton coal-fired plant was retired in 2013 and the company extracted millions of tons of ash from old garbage pits and removed them to safer-coated dumps built on the site. property. Gray ash left by burning coal contains toxic heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury.
Duke has been carefully monitored for the handling of his coal ash since a drainage pipe collapsed under a garbage pit in an old factory in Eden in 2014, triggering a massive spill covering 70 miles ( 110 kilometers) of Dan in gray mud. .
In a subsequent deal with federal regulators, Duke agreed to plead guilty to nine violations of the Clean Water Act and to pay $ 102 million in fines and compensation for unlawfully discharging coal ash into five North Carolina power plants . The company is in the process of closing all its coal ash dumps by 2029.
Spokesperson Megan S. Thorpe, State Environmental Quality Department, said the state regulators would conduct a thorough inspection of the site as soon as possible and safely.
"DEQ has been closely monitoring all the coal ash reservoirs that could be vulnerable in this record rain event," Thorpe said. She added that the Ministry, after evaluating the damage, "will hold the public service responsible for implementing the solution guaranteeing the protection of public health and the environment".
There are at least two other Duke coal plants in North Carolina that are likely to be affected by the storm.
The HF Lee Generating Station, located near Goldsboro, has three inactive ash ponds that were flooded during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, exposing a small amount of coal ash that could have poured into the nearby Neuse River. . Old garbage pits are covered with soil and vegetation to prevent the erosion of toxic ash.
The Neuse is expected to be more than nine feet above flood level on Monday and Sheehan said the company is expecting the same ash ponds to be flooded again.
At W.H. Weatherspoon's power plant near Lumberton, Sheehan said it had already rained more than 75 inches (Saturday) Saturday, causing a nearby swamp to overflow into the mill's cooling pond. The Lumber River is expected to peak at more than 11 feet (3.3 meters) above flood level on Sunday, placing floodwater near the top of the earth embankment containing the coal ash dump from the factory.
Environmentalists have been warning for decades that Duke coal ash ponds are vulnerable to severe storms and pose a threat to drinking water supply and public safety.
"Unfortunately, Duke Energy has spent years lobbying and advocating and still has not removed the coal ash from its dangerous riparian areas in the coastal zone, some of which are in the floodplain," he said. said Frank Holleman, a lawyer at Southern Environmental Law. Center that fought against the company in court. "When a hurricane like Florence strikes, we must hope and pray that our communities will not suffer the consequences of years of irresponsible coal ash burning from coal ash services."
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Follow Michael Biesecker, Associated Press Associate Press Reporter, at http://twitter.com/mbieseck
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