Waterkeepers Photograph Duke Workers Pumping Ash Pond Effluent Into Stream Near Moncure, NC

[hatrack]

Raleigh, N.C. — Advocates with the Waterkeeper Alliance say pictures they released Monday of workers for Duke Energy pumping water from a coal ash pond into a stream that feeds the Cape Fear River shows the company violating state and federal clean water rules.

Duke officials don't dispute they were pumping the water, but they say they were allowed to do so for maintenance work under current permits for the pond, which is at a retired power plant in Moncure.

"To label the secret, unmitigated, intentional discharge of untold amounts of highly toxic wastewater as 'routine maintenance' seems ludicrous," said Peter Harrison of the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Coal ash has been a subject in much in the news since Feb. 2. That's when a pipe running underneath a Duke coal ash pond near Eden ruptured, dumping up to 39,000 of ash into the Dan River.

EDIT

http://www.wral.com/environmentalists-raise-objections-to-duke-pumping-at-moncure-coal-ash-pond/13487624/

[MisterP]

1. 2015: NC bans photographing any petrochemical facility or body of water bigger than 5 feet across