Duke Energy Chief Executive Lynn Good, Governor Pat McCrory, and the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Frank Holleman all weighed in on coal ash disposal during Sunday night’s 60 Minutes.
Click on the image below to watch the full segment with Leslie Stahl, which is now archived at WRAL.com.
Try as some people might to wish North Carolina’s massive coal ash problem away, it isn’t going anywhere soon — either physically or politically. Another chapter will begin to unfold this coming Sunday evening when the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes examines the situation.
According to the Charlotte Business Journal, Duke CEO Lynn Good will be interviewed by Leslie Stahl. No word on whether they will discuss the intimate relationship between Duke and the McCrory administration.
The Guv. of course is a former 28-year Duke employee, who keeps hiring many of his former colleagues into state government.
The story was apparently recorded in September, but the coal ash mess hasn’t gotten any better since — with residents of Lee County balking at hosting a repository, new leaks springing up and a federal investigation of the whole situation still lurking out there somewhere.
Bottom line: Stay tuned. Neither the coal ash itself or the political fallout from the Dan River disaster will be buried anytime soon.
The state Supreme Court today bypassed the Court of Appeals and took five controversial cases for direct review, exercising its rarely-used discretion and raising eyebrows over the timing, with contentious partisan elections soon getting underway.
The issues raised in the cases — school vouchers, coal ash, class certification — are hot buttons, and some of the parties involved have deep-pockets — including Duke Energy and U.S. Tobacco Cooperative
The high court took those cases despite having yet to render opinions in several high-profile cases — including the redistricting case, which has been pending since argument in January, and two cases concerning the Racial Justice Act, pending since argument in April.
Here are the cases:
Hart v. North Carolina: This is the appeal of Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood’s August ruling that the state’s newly-enacted school voucher program was unconstitutional because it:
1) appropriates to private schools grades K-12, by use of funds which apparently have gone to the university system budget but which should be used exclusively for establishing and maintaining the uniform system of free public schools;
2) appropriates education funds in a manner that does not accomplish a public purpose;
3) appropriates educational funds outside the supervision and administration of the state board of education;
4) creates a non-uniform system of education;
5) appropriates taxpayer funds to educational institutions that have no standards, curriculum and requirements for teachers and principals to be certified;
6) fails to guard and maintain the rights of the people who privilege the education by siphoning money from the public schools in favor of private schools; and
7) allows funding of non-public schools that discriminate on account of religion.
The case had just gotten underway in the Court of Appeals before the Supreme Court’s order today.
Cape Fear River Watch v. N.C. Environmental Management Commission: This is Duke Energy’s appeal of Superior Court Judge Paul Ridgeway’s March ruling requiring the company to immediately eliminate the source of groundwater contamination at its coal ash pits — in advance of any clean-up plans it might later adopt. In its opening brief in the Court of Appeals, Duke Energy argues that the Coal Ash Management Act passed by the General Assembly in August overruled the lower court’s decision.
Fisher v. Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization (U.S. Tobacco Cooperative): This is an appeal of the certification of a class comprised of some 800,000 past and present tobacco farmers (per U.S. Tobacco Co-op’s brief) claiming to be entitled to and seeking payment from a $340 million reserve fund held and maintained by the cooperative.
Arnesen v. Rivers Edge Golf Club: Five cases are consolidated in this appeal, in which purchasers of vacant lots in Brunswick County sued the developer, mortgage broker, appraisers, attorneys, and BBT Bank, alleging a scheme to sell the lots at artificially inflated prices through “high-pressure, misleading sales tactics, fruadulent appraisals, unscrupulous lending practice and other conduct.” Purchasers of the lots are appealing orders from the Business Court dismissing certain claims and defendants.
Cubbage v. N.C. State University Endowment Fund: This case concerns the pending sale of the Hofmann State Forest by the N.C. State Endowment Fund, which plaintiffs say was negotiated in secret and failed to comply with the N.C. Environmental Policy Act because the fund never obtained an Environmental Impact Statement. Wake County Superior Court Judge Shannon Joseph dismissed the case last November.
A
s noted in this space yesterday morning, federal regulators have been forced in recent days to put the kibosh on yet another sweetheart arrangement between Duke Energy and the McCrory administration that would have allowed the company to begin to address some of the problems in its coal ash “ponds” by draining the toxic liquid directly into rivers and streams. What could go wrong, huh?
This morning the editorial page of the Fayetteville Observer rightfully (if rather politely) criticizes the plan and issues a word of thanks to federal officials at the EPA for stepping in and putting up a big stop sign:
In late August, DENR told Duke it could begin draining all of its 33 ash ponds across the state. Three weeks later, the EPA intervened, pointing out that this would likely violate Duke’s wastewater discharge permits and allow massive amounts of polluted water to be dumped, with virtually no monitoring for the impact on water quality.
Ponds at Duke’s shut-down Cape Fear power plant, which sits upstream from water-treatment plants for Lee, Harnett and Cumberland counties, hold an estimated billion gallons of coal-ash-contaminated wastewater. According to the EPA, DENR would have allowed Duke to dump it all in the river.
A Duke vice president complained that being forced to comply with its permits may make it impossible to meet a cleanup timetable.
We’re grateful that the EPA stepped in, but sorry to see DENR again being so casual about our health and safety. We hope the feds continue to watch closely.
Let’s hope the McCrory administration doesn’t give a lot of folks good reason to get a lot less polite with their criticism in the days ahead. We’re not, however, holding our breath on that front.
In case you missed it on Friday, Michael Biesecker at AP had another troubling story on Duke Energy’s seemingly metastasizing coal ash mess. This is the lead:
Federal environmental officials spurred North Carolina regulators to reverse a policy allowing Duke Energy to drain massive amounts of polluted wastewater from its coal ash dumps directly into the state’s rivers and lakes, according to documents.
The Southern Environmental Law Center released documents Friday showing that the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources quietly gave Duke approval on Aug. 28 to start emptying liquids from all of its 33 coal ash dumps across the state through existing drain pipes at the facilities.
Good grief! What’s next? Direct pipelines into the backyards of all of Duke’s residential customers? Meanwhile, this is from Dan Besse’s Monday morning update for the League of Conservation Voters:
Around the state…Recalculating?
Users of GPS devices can attest to the high annoyance factor of the perpetual “recalculating…” messages received when they take a wrong turn.
Perhaps that helps explain our aggravation at Duke energy’s latest “whoops” on coal ash. According to Duke, it appears that they ‘miscalculated’ the amount of toxic coal ash they have stored at leaking pits around the state by, oh, about six million tons or so. Read More
