In this Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2014, photo, Amy Adams, North Carolina campaign coordinator with Appalachian Voices dips her hand into the Dan River in Danville, Va., as signs of coal ash appear in the river. Duke Energy estimates that up to 82,000 tons of ash has been released from a break in a 48-inch storm water pipe at the Dan River Power Plant in Eden N.C.RALEIGH, N.C. – Duke Energy said Tuesday it plans to begin dredging coal ash out of a North Carolina river as the state’s environmental agency moved to scuttle a previously proposed settlement with the company over pollution leaking from waste dumps at its power plants.
Lawyers for the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources asked a judge late Monday to disregard its own proposed settlement with the nation’s largest electricity provider. Under the deal, Duke would have paid fines of $99,111 for pollution that leaked from two coal dumps like the one that ruptured Feb. 2, spewing out enough toxic sludge into the Dan River to fill 73 Olympic-sized pools. The deal proposed over the summer covered plants near Asheville and Charlotte, while this month’s spill was near the town of Eden.
The state dumped the settlement one day after a story by The Associated Press in which environmentalists criticized the arrangement as a sweetheart deal aimed at shielding Duke from far more expensive penalties the $50 billion company might face under the federal Clean Water Act.
The settlement would have required Duke to study how to stop the contamination, but included no requirement to clean up the dumps near Asheville and Charlotte.
Gov. Pat McCrory said Tuesday a new task force would be created at the environmental agency within the month to assess all 31 of Duke’s coal ash dumps in the state.