Anisa Khalifa: A decade ago, thousands of tons of toxic coal ash poured into the Dan River in North Carolina. The spill — the third largest of its kind in US history — was a devastating environmental disaster.
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Unidentified Anchor: The coal ash spill in North Carolina has dumped about 82,000 tons of waste into a nearby river. The long-term environmental effects on fish, wildlife, soil and even cows are not yet known.
Anisa Khalifa: But today, the event is perhaps best known for its legacy of legislation. I’m Anisa Khalifa. This week on the Broadside, WUNC environmental reporter Celeste Gracia tells the story of how activists and communities across North Carolina turned a local disaster into a national rallying cry for change.
Brian Williams: Don't fall in the river.
Celeste Gracia: I'll do my best. If I do, I'll scream for you.
On a bright, chilly morning in early January I stood on the banks of the Dan River in Eden, North Carolina. I was there to meet Brian Williams, a program manager at the Dan River Basin Association, a non-profit focused on protecting the river and its ecosystem. Brian lives in Virginia, but he drove down to show me the river he’s dedicated so much of his life to.
Brian Williams: The Dan River knows no state boundaries. It starts in Virginia, and ends up down in Albemarle Sound. So it crisscrosses the state about seven times. So it kind of sews both our states together. So we cover both Virginia and North Carolina, parts of each.
Celeste Gracia: Can you describe where we are right now and what the river looked like in the days and weeks after the spill?
Brian Williams: So we’re approximately two and a half miles down from the Duke site where the coal ash spill happened. There was gray coal ash splattered all on the trees and all on the river. When you got down to here, this was nothing but a gray, black river. And it was beyond belief how much there was.
Celeste Gracia: The site Brian is talking about is Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station. For decades the facility burned coal to produce electricity, creating coal ash as a toxic byproduct. That coal ash was stored in a basin — Duke Energy dug up a large hole, filled it with water and then put coal ash in the water. On February 2nd 2014, a stormwater pipe underneath this specific coal ash basin broke.
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Unidentified Anchor: The pipe is still leaking. Jeff Tiberii of North Carolina Public Radio reports that officials say drinking water downstream is safe, but environmental questions still remain.
Celeste Gracia: Even though it's been 10 years, Brian still holds on to a memento from the disaster. During our conversation he pulled out a jar filled with sediment from the river taken a week after the spill. It was collected a thousand feet downstream from where the pipe broke.
Brian Williams: What you're looking at is about an inch thick of water, and then about three quarters of an inch of sediment that's on the bottom of this sample jar. And if you turn this sample jar upside down, the stuff on the bottom sticks to the top, just like concrete. It's amazing. You can shake this sample up and get all that stuff off the bottom eventually and you can see how it gets up in the water column. But then it's going to settle back out and it's heavy. I mean, these are heavy metals in there, so it's going to go to the bottom. And you can see all the glistening things in there. And it looks kind of, uh, fascinating, like glitter. Uh, but it's like black glitter. It's like black death is what it is to me. You know, some people look at it and just see, oh, it's pretty black sand. I look at it and I see arsenic and selenium and beryllium and lead and all the stuff that I know is concentrated in there.
Celeste Gracia: Tiffany Hayworth sees the same thing. Tiffany is the executive director of the Dan River Basin Association. I spoke to her in her office, which is just two miles away from the river.
Tiffany Hayworth: I was actually sitting right here in this desk when I received a phone call from a mailman — postal worker who always did his lunches on the bridge, where the Dan flows underneath. And he called me and he said, The Dan is running black. I've never in the 20 years I've been having lunch here, I have never seen the Dan this color.
Celeste Gracia: For the next year, Tiffany, Brian and the rest of their team were on the river nonstop, showing reporters around, working with officials, telling people whether or not it was safe to go in the water. She clearly remembers the immediate impact the spill had on the wildlife and ecosystem of the river.
Tiffany Hayworth: We were seeing turtles coming out of the river. We were seeing mussels die by the thousands. And we knew that an entire layer of macroinvertebrates that keep that river clean, had just instantly died when that coal ash hit them. We had identified this as a major issue 4 years before this, before it happened, and no one would listen. So it was frustrating.
Celeste Gracia: Tiffany Hayworth, Brian Williams and several other environmental advocates I spoke to all argue the same point — this spill could have been, and should have been, prevented, especially after the 2008 Kingston tragedy.
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Unidentified Anchor: In Kingston, Tennessee, efforts to clean up a giant spill of coal ash are going day and night…
Unidentified Anchor: 300 acres of land and water were inundated…
Unidentified Anchor: 5.4 million cubic yards of the sludge burst through an earthen dam…
Unidentified Anchor: The health of people in the area is on the minds of state and federal officials who've been working all week to determine what the ash slide could mean to humans…
Celeste Gracia: The Kingston Fossil Plant, run by the Tennessee Valley Authority, released one billion gallons of coal ash slurry, destroying homes, wildlife habitat and ultimately killing dozens of people who later cleaned up the radioactive waste. The aftermath of the Kingston spill included national media attention and outrage that resulted in Senate hearings.
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Unidentified Anchor: Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer started off the hearing with some stern words for TVA president Tom Kilgore.
Barbara Boxer: We want to work with you, but you've got to clean up your act there, literally.
Unidentified Anchor: She said the TVA knew that its ash storage system was faulty…
Celeste Gracia: Frank Holloman is a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. Frank is known as the coal ash lawyer. Despite all this, Frank says nothing changed.
Frank Holloman: The laws of the nation didn't change. No utility was required to clean up any antiquated coal ash lagoon. It was just treated as a one off disaster that happened and that was that.
Celeste Gracia: But it did galvanize activists. In part because of this 2008 disaster, groups in North Carolina started to warn Duke Energy and the state Department of Environmental Quality about the dangers of unlined coal ash basins as early as 2011.
Frank Holloman: And we were actively in litigation about every site in the region in North Carolina by the end of 2013.
Celeste Gracia: Frank says this is why the Dan River spill was different from the 2008 spill.
Frank Holloman: The major reason why the Dan River spill ended up being such a critical event and helped to change coal ash policy in North Carolina and the country was because we had already been making the case and enforcing the Clean Water laws against coal ash pollution throughout the year-plus leading up to the spill. It wasn't treated as a one-off disaster, but rather as validation of what the conservation groups had been saying for over a year.
Celeste Gracia: Alongside that validation, the Dan River spill inspired North Carolinians across the state to join forces and fight for change, forming a group called the Alliance for Carolinians Together Against Coal Ash.
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Unidentified Man: I am not afraid. What can Duke Energy do to us? We're getting stronger and bigger every day. Why? Because we love North Carolina and our lives depend on it.
Celeste Gracia: The Alliance for Carolinians Together Against Coal Ash attended every available public hearing, flooded government officials with public comments, and constantly raised awareness about coal ash. The group was mainly made up of folks who lived near one of the 14 North Carolina coal plants Duke Energy operated at the time. Amy Adams is an environmental advocate and a former organizer with the Alliance.
Amy Adams: 14 communities across the state, all facing similar issues, all with similar concerns, all with similar fears. So from Asheville to Goldsboro, to Winston Salem, to Salisbury, we had community meetings every month for eight years. And their sort of tagline was "Statewide and Unified."
Celeste Gracia: The Alliance advocated for transparency, accountability and the right to a healthy environment. But most importantly, the group wanted Duke Energy to clean up its coal ash in a safe way.
Amy Adams: And they were a powerhouse. It brings me back to the core of organizing, time and time again, is that there is power in people. I'm so proud to have been a part of it, and watched folks turn on and activate and see what true people power looks like, and what organizing and what camaraderie looks like, and what solidarity looks like, you know, because these communities were also very different. And they continued to come together for years, you know, across racial lines, socioeconomic lines.
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Dawn Crawley: I'm Dawn Crawley from Sanford, North Carolina. I'm representing Lee and Chatham County.
Bobby Jones: My name is Bobby Jones. I'm from Goldsboro in Wayne County.
Larry Mathis: My name is Larry Mathis. I live in Belmont, North Carolina, near the Duke Allen plant.
Tracy Edwards: My name is Tracy Edwards and I'm speaking to you today on behalf of the residents of Stokes County in Blues Creek, Walnut Cove and the Pine Hall communities.
Amy Adams: It is forever going to be one of those organizing stories that I'm always going to try to emulate. When I think about how coalition works and how communities should be put first and supported, I want to be able to replicate what happened in North Carolina all across the South. Yes, it took a really long time. But we got the cleanup that we were seeking, we got a good number of the demands we were seeking.
Celeste Gracia: After the break, we’ll see what that clean up looks like today, and if, more than 10 years later, the people impacted most think justice was served.
Celeste Gracia: Hey Bill?
Bill Norton: Yeah?
Celeste Gracia: So, are we standing on coal ash right now?
Bill Norton: We are standing on top of a coal ash landfill at the Roxboro Site in Person County, North Carolina.
Celeste Gracia: That’s Bill Norton, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, one of the largest utility companies in the country, based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I had to double check with him where exactly we were, because at first, I didn’t realize I was standing on top of a mountain of coal ash. It looked more like a large hill, with grass growing on the side. There was a dirt road winding around to the very top where the flat surface of wet coal ash looked more like soggy dirt. Below me I could see about a dozen backhoes and excavators, moving more coal ash around to soon create yet another lined landfill.
You’re probably wondering — what’s the difference between a coal ash basin and a coal ash lined landfill? As I mentioned earlier, a coal ash basin is essentially a man made pond. Picture a large hole in the ground that was dug up and filled with water and coal ash. These basins are considered dangerous not only because of their clear potential to spill, but also because the coal ash trickles through dirt and pollutes surrounding groundwater. On other hand, a lined landfill, like the one I stood on at the Roxboro site, contains several layers of protection to prevent any spills or groundwater pollution. Here’s Bill Norton again with Duke Energy.
Bill Norton: There is one impervious layer, a leak detection system, another impervious layer, and if somehow groundwater were to get through that, we have groundwater monitoring wells that would detect leaks too, which would allow us to make repairs. Once excavation is complete, the landfill will be capped with, again, an impervious, waterproof layer, then capped with soil. And then, typically grass will be grown on it as well. Once that is done, the ash is fully secured and it's in place and that's where it will stay. And we're going to continue monitoring groundwater around the landfill and around the former basin for at least 30 years beyond that.
Celeste Gracia: Duke Energy is in the process of closing all of its 14 coal plants in North Carolina and moving 31 associated coal ash basins into onsite lined landfills. Bill Norton says so far, Duke has excavated 44 million tons of coal ash, with 81 million tons left to go. The utility has completed similar work in Florida and is in the process of doing the same in South Carolina. Duke Energy is doing all of this in part because of legal rulings, including a 2020 landmark North Carolina settlement that created strict guidelines for coal ash storage.
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Unidentified Anchor: Duke Energy is set to carry out the country's largest coal ash cleanup. The power company reached a settlement to excavate 80 million tons of coal ash from unlined ponds in North Carolina. This agreement follows years of litigation and both sides in the legal battle are hailing it as a win.
Celeste Gracia: Remember Amy Adams and the Alliance she helped organize? That’s what they were fighting for.
Amy Adams: That feels like justice to me, because it was community led principles that were met in that resolution.
Celeste Gracia: But before this 2020 agreement, there was a flurry of action taken against Duke Energy, and policies put in place to address coal ash. In September 2014, seven months after the Dan River spill, the North Carolina General Assembly passed the Coal Ash Management Act, which prohibited the creation of any new coal ash basins. At the time, the law was the first of its kind in the nation. Federal policies soon followed. And over the next several years, Duke Energy paid millions of dollars in fines to state and federal agencies. In May 2015, Duke Energy pleaded guilty to nine federal criminal violations of the Clean Water Act, four of which were tied directly to the Dan River spill.
Celeste Gracia: Back at the Roxboro coal site, Duke Energy’s Bill Norton says the Dan River spill was an accident that shouldn’t have happened.
Bill Norton: We took immediate action and immediate ownership of the issue. We were on the scene immediately trying to determine what had to be done to stop that pipe from releasing ash into the river. Ultimately, the EPA took over and became incident commander, so we had to operate at their direction and at their speed. But we addressed the issue as quickly as we could. It's important to emphasize that the river's ecology is absolutely thriving today.
Celeste Gracia: Tiffany Hayworth and Brian Williams of the Dan River Basin Association are still there on the riverbanks nearly everyday. On the day I visited Eden, the river was serene, with water rushing by silently. It certainly looked a lot healthier than the murky jar of coal ash water Brian showed me earlier in our conversation. But he still has questions about the long-term impacts of the spill.
Brian Williams: You just can't imagine concentrated heavy metals being in the environment and not being a problem at some point. So that's still a concern of ours.
Celeste Gracia: Only about 10 percent of the coal ash that flowed into the river was ever excavated. And even though the Dan River spill led to sweeping policy change at both the state and federal level, I asked Brian and Tiffany: is that justice?
Tiffany Hayworth: I want to start by saying that Duke Energy from day one took full responsibility. We explained to them, we want you to get this out of our river right now. And unfortunately, they couldn’t. So is it justice? No. There’s no amount of money that can turn back time and get that original giant pile of coal ash out of our river within the first week or two.
Brian Williams: It's never enough. But just like Tiffany said, there's only so much you can do and you can't reverse time. So I don't see it as justice. I see it as lessons learned. And I think as we move down the road, we won't make those same mistakes again.
Anisa Khalifa: If you’d like to read more of Celeste Gracia’s reporting for WUNC on the ten-year anniversary of the Dan River coal ash spill and its lasting impact on environmental policy, we’ve dropped a link in this week’s show description. This episode of The Broadside was edited by Jerad Walker. Wilson Sayre is our executive producer. And special thanks goes out this week to WUNC editor Liz Baier.
The Broadside is a production of WUNC–North Carolina Public Radio. Email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend! I’m Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.