Clean up Belews Creek Power Plant

Belews Creek Steam Station has come a long way since the earlt 1970’s.

No more raining ash and soot, blackening the roofs of cars and houses in Stokes County. The Belews Creek Steam Station now has a much higher sense of ecological and soical responsibility. But few can forget how they dumped coal-combustion waste in its on-site, massive ash basin; a type of waste pond which leaked into Belews Lake, all but killing off 17 of the Lakes 20 fish species.

They are not so ecologically irresponsible anymore, but the aftermath still remains today, with an alarming amount of people suffering ailments that they cannot explain.

Yes Duke Energy has done a lot since then to clean up their act. They have invested about $1 billion since 2005 to improve its environmental impact.

But is it enough?

There is still an Ash Basin, not in use anymore but still an environmental threat.

The ash basin, a man-made earthen embankment, about 2,000 feet long, 140 feet high, on a tributary to the Dan River known as Little Belews Creek impounds about 350 feet of surface water. It holds about 4.1 million gallons of ash, according to environmental groups. This one ash basin is unlined. A lining is a protective layer that helps keep waste from seeping into groundwater. This ash basin is not lined.

Groundwater has been found in recent years to have levels of chromium, iron and manganese above the state’s maximum allowable limit.

To make it worse, the permit for one of the ash basin’s outfalls does not require monitoring for several elements known to exist on coal ash waste, and it does not set limits on several of the elements for which it does require monitoring.

One of the permits at the ash basin requires monitoring and sets limits on several elements, including iron and manganese. Other elements regularly found in coal ash must be monitored but have no set limits — including arsenic, selenium, silver, mercury and nitrogen. And the permit does not require Duke Energy to monitor for other elements found in coal ash, including Radon, Radium and Uranium.

The Department of Natural Resources (DENR) is required by law (Clean Water Act) to use best professional judgment to require the best available technology to require treatment to eliminate or reduce these discharges. Instead, they don’t do that, and rely upon dilution to solve the problem. But dilution does not work with heavy metals. They accumulate in the sediments and the water at the bottom of the waterways, where important biological processes happen, and erupt when the water and temperature conditions are right.

DENR is not following the law when it fails to set limits for heavy metals in each of the permits for the coal plants

Keeping the coal waste in the ash basin and landfills, and out of the groundwater, rivers and lakes is not negotiable.

These ash basins host potential contaminants such as arsenic. Other elements in coal waste include cadmium, lead, mercury, chromium and selenium. Health risks posed by these elements include cancer and neurological damage.

Such a disaster is very unlikely here, said Culbert, stressing that the dam that holds up the ash basin has no notices of violation in the past five years. EPA “inspections found the Kingston situation to be isolated, and no impoundments (ash basins) nationally were found to be ‘unsatisfactory,’ with structural integrity questions,” she said.

Merely closing an ash basin does not make it safe. Cleaning it up does.

The Environmental protection Agency’s proposed new rules require unlined ash basins to be closed within 5 years. While this goes a long way to, it is not enough. These ash basins need to be lined and cleaned up. They still pose a threat to the environment.

Urge the EPA to revisit their proposals and to state regulators the ability to make decisions on a site-specific basis, and to force Duke Energy to clean up the unlined ash basin.