Material flows out of a flooded coal ash dump at a North Carolina power plant toward the Cape Fear River. At a family ranch south of San Antonio, a dozen pollutants have leaked from a nearby coal ash dump, data showed. The issue flared up last year when Hurricane Florence unleashed flooding at coal ash sites alongside Duke Energy’s L.V. Roewer added that just because contaminants are detected near a coal ash storage site, “that doesn’t necessarily translate into people’s drinking water being contaminated.”Cleaning up coal ash is costly. In December, a member of the Virginia State Corporation Commission said that it could cost ratepayers as much as $3.30 a month over 20 years — between $2.4 billion and $5.6 billion — to clean up Virginia-based Dominion Energy’s 11 coal ash ponds and six coal ash landfills in the state.

Source: Washington Post March 04, 2019 05:02 UTC