From Staff Reports

The details of a tentative agreement that the state of North Carolina recently reached with Duke Energy Progress regarding coal ash pond pollution in Asheville and at several other sites across the state were reviewed and explained during a presentation Sept. 18 at the County Club of Asheville. About 60 people attended.

Addressing “The proposed Duke Coal Ash Settlement: What Does It Mean?” at Leadership Asheville Forum’s Critical Issues Luncheon were Julie Mayfield, an attorney and co-director of the WNC Alliance; and co-presenter Kelly Martin, the Sierra Club’s North Carolina campaign representative.

“Until you do something different with coal ash, or stop producing coal ash, it’s like bailing out a boat, but not fixing the hole,” Mayfield said.

Jeff Hay, head of the LAAF, introduced Mayfield to the crowd. “We quite frankly don’t know everything we need to know about the coal ash issue,” he said. “I live four or five blocks away from Lake Julian, so that’s why this issue is important to me… I hope today we’ll be able to get better acquainted with the facts. We have several speakers today.”

He added, “What we wanted was an education as opposed to resolving litigation.”

Regarding Mayfield, Hay said she was chosen by LAAF “to provide a balanced presentation — and she brought along someone (Martin) from the Sierra Club. We invited Duke Energy, but no speaker, but we have Jason Walls from Duke Energy, who will listen and be available to answer questions afterward.”

Martin began the presentation by noting, “Julie asked me to provide a little bit of bigger context of the Beyond Coal effort around the United States… That will kind of set us up for Julie’s presentation.”

As for what spawned the Beyond Coal movement, she said, “What we see from the cradle to the grave is coal in the Appalachian Mountains just north of us in West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. It’s required people to move out of areas after living there for generations.”

She said a second reason for Beyond Coal is that coal is “a leading cause of respiratory illness.”

What’s more, Martin said, “Personally, I’m worried about the impact (of coal) on global warming and climate change.”

In terms of climate change, she claimed that, in 2009, “coal is responsible for one third — 35 percent — of carbon pollution in the United States Therefore, we need to transition from coal to clean energy as soon as possible.

“I see that climate disruption is on our doorstep…. There is vast evidence… I feel compelled that this is our moral obligation to act… As does our president (Barack Obama), who has regulations proposed to roll out soon.”

Beyond Coal is operating in 47 states across the country, she said. “We have grassroots organizing and a legal front.”

She listed the following Beyond Coal’s action phases:

• Phase 1: Stop the rush to build new coal (2005-2012). Specifically, this involved stopping 90 percent of proposed plants — and building the group’s movement and infrastructure

• Phase 2: Replace most vulnerable plants (2010-2015). This, she said, would involve replacing 105,000MW with clean energy by 2020. Also, the group would try to block exports in Alaska, the Northwest and the Gulf

• Phase 3: Replace coal with clean energy (2015-2020). This means locking in replacement of the remaining coal fleet no later than 2030

Martin added, “We’d like to see all of our coal go away by 2030…. If this is successful, what we’ll see is a dramatic reduction in carbon pollution.”

There have been 171 proposed coal plants defeated, as a result of the Beyond Coal efforts across the country, she said.

“Also, many plants will close as the result of tighter EPA standards for coal-fired power plants. Here at the Asheville plant, Duke Energy Progress invested in pollution controls.” However, she said, “Many companies have found it’s more economical” to build new clean-energy plants.

“We have a goal of retiring one-third of the country’s coal fleet by 2020 -— and we’re about halfway there. So coal generation has declined about 18 percent over the past few years.

“Wind has tremendous potential, but the technology is not there yet for widespread use around the United States... Wind is now producing about 3 percent of this country’s electricity, which is a vast change”from even a few years ago.

“Solar’s not on the map yet —almost 1 percent, but it’s cost is coming down... When you set a benchmark for generating clean energy…. it can make it happen,” Martin said. “By 2050, renewables can supply 80 percent of U.S. energy generation, according to studies... North Carolina is fifth in installed solar capacity.”

In Asheville, the Duke Energy Progress coal plant at Lake Julian “generates electricity for us,” Martin said, in concluding her presentation. “It’s the biggest source of pollution in the county — the coal equivalent pollution to 500,000 cars per year on the road.”

Mayfield then then began her phase of the presentation by asking a rhetorical question: “What is coal ash?”

In response to her own question, she said coal ash is “the stuff that is left over after you burn coal. It is stored in two (unlined) lagoons” near Lake Julian in South Asheville. “The ash is mixed with water and stored there. There is a 1964 lagoon, which overs 45 acres; and a 1982 lagoon, 42 acres.”

“They’re right along I-26, near the French Broad River, Mayfield said. “The dams are so close to I-26 that the EPA rates them as ‘high hazard dams,’” wherein a breach would likely result in loss of life.

Ironically, she noted, “Air pollution controls increase pollutants in ash... As you might have heard, the1982 pond is being emptied for fill at the airport. And that’s actually a good thing because the coal ash stays where it is placed.. The older pond is not really a pond any more. It’s earth now and things grow on it.”

Mayfield asked, rhetorically, “So what’s the problem with coal ash? They’re two-fold. There are seeps coming out from underneath the dams and getting into the French Broad River… The other problem is the pollutants are seeping into the groundwater. Heavy metals and other chemicals are there.”

While Duke Energy has been conducting its own testing for years around the ponds, Mayfield said, referring to environmentalists, “We’ve been doing our own surface-water testing for about three years... You can obviously discharge wastewate — and they have a permit. But the two seeps are illegal.”

In detailing a timeline from January to August, she told of environmental groups sending notice of intent to sue, a lawsuit filed against Duke Energy over its Asheville and Riverbend plants, environmental groups petitioning to interveneand the announcement of a draft settlement that drew nearly 5,000 comments.

“What those lawsuits say, in essence, is continued operation of those plants is a threat to human health and the environment and the state is on record in agreeing with that,” Mayfield said. 

The draft settlement on coal ash, she said, does the following:

• Imposes a $60,200 fine

• Requires site assessment to determine “cause, significance and extend of exceedances of groundwater standards”

What it doesn’t do, she said, are the following:

• Have firm deadlines on when things will happen.

• Require Duke Energy to stop the pollution of groundwater and the French Broad River

• Require Duke Energy to do anything different with coal ash going forward.

“I can’t talk about it now, but I think the deadlines issue has been addressed” in the latest agreement, she said.

“We have the right to appeal this consent decree, if we don’t agree with that. There are multiple forums, including the litigation forum.

“Ultimately, what we’d like to do is address is the future of coal ash with Duke Energy Progress,” Mayfield concluded.

Meanwhile, Walls, the Duke Energy Progress official sitting in on the LAAF meeting, told the Daily Planet afterward that “I respect Julie and Kelly,” but there are three “really important things” he would say in response to their presentations.

“First, if you look at the French Broad River today — it’s a healthy river,” Walls said. “Second, the company’s accountable for what remediation” is deemed necessary. “Third, the state is doing what, by law,” it must do “to regulate our business.

Walls added that, of about 15 coal-fired Duke Energy plants across the state, “seven are being retired.”