Campaign victory! In big win for communities, coal ash disposal company drops appeal of Chatham, Lee County cases

 

We will be blogging individual articles from The League Line, our quarterly newsletter

Link to Winter 2021 League Line: https://www.bredl.org/theleagueline/Winter2021.pdf

By Therese Vick 

Almost a year to the day that Administrative Law Judge Melissa Owens Lassiter reversed her decision which had allowed coal ash to be disposed of in Chatham and Lee Counties, North Carolina, the communities are announcing another victory. Charah, Inc., the company that owns the two sites, has dropped its appeal of the 2019 ruling and has agreed that no coal ash will go to the Colon site in Lee County. The Brickhaven site will be closed as required by the permit issued by the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). In the settlement, the company also agreed on enhanced groundwater monitoring of the Brickhaven site in Chatham County.

After the Dan River coal ash spill in February 2014,  Governor Pat McCrory and Duke Energy had a 150-million-ton coal ash problem. The resulting public outrage culminated in the Coal Ash Management Act -- including a last-minute addition: disposing of coal ash in mines would be considered “beneficial reuse.” Emails obtained by BREDL through public records requests showed a scheme was hatched as the CAMA legislation was introduced. State regulatory staff met with Charah, the owner of the landfills and the contractor handling coal ash disposal for Duke, and former House member, Mitch Gillespie, who was at that time Assistant Secretary of Environment for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (now DEQ) to “discuss permitting options.”

In November 2014, it was clear what the plan was. Duke Energy announced its plan to dump up to 20 million tons of toxic coal ash on unsuspecting Chatham and Lee County communities. They claimed it was “mine reclamation”, even though large portions of the actual footprint of the proposed coal ash megadumps had never been mined. There was an unprecedented rush to permit these sites. Local officials gave up and told residents, “We can’t fight Duke.” Legislators turned their backs. It took 6 years, but we didn’t give up.

This victory was based on grassroots organizing and the principled position that BREDL and our chapters, Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump and EnvironmentaLEE, and allies took – that coal ash must be kept on utility property and not taken to other backyards for disposal.¹ No other applications to use mines for coal ash disposal have been submitted to DEQ.

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¹ BREDL technical report Coal Ash Disposition: The Alternative for North Carolina  https://www.bredl.org/pdf4/Coal_ash_report_14-083_w_Appx_A_B.pdf