Why, yes, you are right. Something similar recently happened to the water supply in a nearby river.Environmentalists and residents of North Carolina and Virginia are anxiously waiting for toxicity test results from the Dan River, where tens of thousands of tons of coal ash spilled earlier this week. The Danville, Va., city manager has released a statement saying that while preliminary findings indicate the area’s drinking water is safe, they await final confirmation. North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources has yet to provide an official determination, but people around the Dan River report that the spill was having visible and adverse effects.
The spill originated with a leaking pipe at a 27-acre pond of coal ash and slurry — a waste product of burning coal — at a defunct Duke Energy power plant along the Dan River in Eden, N.C.
Hundreds of workers are trying to cap the pipe, which has so far allowed 82,000 tons of toxic ash and 27 million gallons of contaminated water to escape into the river. The leak is down to a trickle, but that’s mostly because there’s not much liquid left in the unlined coal pond.
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There’s a layer of very fine toxic coal ash around the Danville intake, and as you go up the river, it becomes two, four, eight, up to 10 to 12 inches of ash on the surface, and it’s slowly moving downriver,” said Amy Adams, North Carolina campaign coordinator at Appalachian Voices, an environmental group.
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The Dan River is the source of drinking water for about 17,500 residents of Danville, and the city’s intake pipe is just 15 miles downstream from the Eden plant
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She said that while the ash is the most obvious effect of the spill, she’s even more concerned about the millions of gallons of toxic water that has made its way into the river.
“It’s the dissolved metals that we’re most concerned about,” she said. “This is a toxic soup.”
Coal ash can contain a slew of dangerous chemicals like mercury, lead, arsenic and selenium.
“How do you clean this up?” Brian Williams, a program manager for the Dan River Basin Association, said to The Associated Press. “Dredge the whole river bottom for miles? You can’t clean this up. It’s going to go up the food chain, from the filter feeders to the fish to the otters and birds and people. Everything in the ecosystem of a river is connected.”
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In 2008 a plant in Tennessee spilled 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into a river and the surrounding area.
Duke Energy has gotten in trouble for its coal-ash storage before. Last year, North Carolina residents sued the company for continued coal-ash contamination around the state. And a study published in August (PDF) found that Duke’s coal ash kills nearly 1 million fish a year in one North Carolina lake alone.
alJazeera
Weeks after public-health authorities declared the water in and around Charleston safe to drink again—despite a Jan. 9 spill of 10,000 gallons of coal-processing chemicals—physicians in the area are advising some patients not to drink from the tap. Freedom Industries, the company that admitted to spewing the chemicals from a decrepit tank farm just a mile and a half upstream from the regional water treatment plant, doesn’t know what effect the compound has on humans. Freedom has retreated into bankruptcy court as a way to freeze liability lawsuits seeking to hold it responsible. The company has denied wrongdoing.
Business Week
It appears to be? This chemical hasn’t been tested?A federal grand jury investigation has been launched into the West Virginia chemical spill that left 300,000 people unable to use their water supply, CNN learned Tuesday.
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On January 9, more than 7,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol leaked into Charleston's water supply from a Freedom Industries storage tank.
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Freedom Industries later told regulators that in addition to the methanol compound that escaped from a ruptured tank, a second chemical -- a mix of polyglycol ethers, known as PPH -- was part of the leak.
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The CDC said little is known about the health hazards of PPH, but it appears to be less toxic than MCHM and made up about 5% of the total volume of the leaking tank.
CNN
For the love of fucking Pete. No wonder the company didn’t report it at first.Elizabeth Scharman, West Virginia's poison control director, told CNN last month that MCHM had not been widely studied.
"We don't know the safety info, how quickly it goes into air, its boiling point," Scharman said.
But wait! There’s more.The chemical is used to wash coal before it goes to market to reduce ash. Exposure to it can cause vomiting, dizziness, headaches, diarrhea and irritated skin, among other symptoms, the American Association of Poison Control Centers and CNN's previous reporting shows.
But, really, what do you want? Clean water?Duke stores millions of tons of coal ash in unlined earthen lagoons throughout North Carolina, perched 80 feet above the rivers and lakes that belong to all of us and provide our drinking water. If Duke has its way, all that coal ash will remain in unlined lagoons next to our rivers and lakes forever.
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The next spill could be at Duke’s Riverbend plant, where millions of tons of ash are perched high above Mountain Island Lake, the drinking water reservoir for the entire Charlotte metropolitan area. It could be at Sutton Lake, a popular destination for sport and subsistence fishing near Wilmington where one of the berms partially collapsed a few years ago. It could be at Belews Creek, the largest coal ash lagoon in the state, where over 4 billion gallons of wet coal ash are held back only by leaking earthen dams.
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Take your pick. There are 14 coal ash sites around the state, and most have more than one unlined lagoon. Many, like Dan River, have dams rated as High Hazard. And all of the lagoons leak. In fact, North Carolina recently sued Duke for unpermitted discharges and violations of groundwater standards at all 14 sites, including Dan River.
News Observer
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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