Coal ash bill passes at end of NC session

Right before adjourning their short session, state legislators passed a bill Aug. 20 addressing coal ash regulations for energy companies — but environmental groups worry it doesn’t do enough.

The new legislation, the first of its kind in North Carolina, comes six months after Duke Energy’s coal ash spill, which caused thousands of tons of coal to leak into the Dan River.

If Gov. Pat McCrory signs the bill into law, it would become illegal to dispose of coal ash in ponds. The disposal of coal ash isn’t heavily regulated by the state. Companies would have a timeline for getting rid of coal ash in the state’s wet impoundments and closing them.

Some environmental organizations say the bill is not a solution.

“It’s a shame that communities aren’t going to have the coal ash removed from their waterways or water supply immediately,” said Dustin Chicurel-Bayard, spokesman for the Sierra Club.

Steve Wall, policy research associate at UNC’s Institute for the Environment, said the bill does not address the cost of cleaning up the coal ash.

“Who’s going to pay for the closures?” Wall said. “Do people paying energy bills pay it, or does Duke Energy pay for it?”

The bill requires owners of coal ash residual impoundments to give the state a proposed plan for closing the impoundments during the next 15 years. High-risk impoundments must be closed by the end of 2019, intermediate sites by the end of 2024 and low-risk impoundments by 2029.

Lawmakers grappled with competing bills this summer, coming to a compromise more than six months after a pipeline break that released several thousand tons of coal ash into the Dan River.

“The entire river to Danville was gray, just like the color out of a crayon box,” Amy Adams, N.C. coordinator for Appalachian Voices, said.

“Ash gray.”

Sierra Club released a statement Aug. 20, saying the legislation undermines a March court ruling that required immediate cleanup of coal ash.

The court ruling had required Duke Energy to take immediate action to stop the coal ash leaking and make a plan to clean up contaminated sites.

“They undermined the judge for industry. In a lot of ways, this is a bill that helped Duke (Energy) out,” Adams said.

The bill also creates stricter standards for monitoring and containing coal ash. Chicurel-Bayard said the fact that coal ash will be regulated under solid waste management laws was a positive, even though the bill undermined the recent court case.

“Your household garbage was managed more carefully than coal ash,” Chicurel-Bayard said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of implementing its own national coal ash standards, Wall said, which should be passed in 2015 and would trump the state’s rules.

“The big question becomes, is this bill going to address long-term coal ash problems in North Carolina?” Wall said.

Adams said she’s concerned because the coal ash has already contaminated groundwater supplies.

“There are communities at risk. Every one of these (coal ash sites) are contaminating ground water,” Adams said. “There are people’s lives at risk.”

state@dailytarheel.com

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