Duke's long neglect
Published May 15, 2015
Editorial by Greensboro News-Record, May 15, 2015.
Last year’s Dan River coal ash spill was the result of repeated human failure.
That was explicitly spelled out in a federal courtroom where Duke Energy admitted that senior managers for years rejected requests to inspect the drainage pipe that ultimately collapsed on Feb. 2, 2014. It allowed the release of 39,000 tons of coal ash into the river — the third-largest spill in the nation’s history.
Duke never denied culpability. It led efforts to clean as much ash from the Dan River as it could. It agreed to remove remaining ash from the storage pit at its retired steam plant near Eden. It has pleaded guilty to criminal violations of the Clean Water Act and accepted $102 million in fines.
But not until Thursday, when it submitted a “joint factual statement” with federal prosecutors to U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard in Greenville, did it reveal so many details about its long neglect of a disaster waiting to happen.
Duke had engineering reports 30 years ago that pointed to the drainage pipe, which ran under a coal-ash pond to the river, as a potential problem and urged a closer look. Employees at the Dan River plant several times over the years asked for funds to conduct robotic camera inspections but were turned down.
“If a camera inspection had been performed as requested, the interior corrosion of the elbow joint in the 48-inch pipe would likely have been visible,” the document said.
The requested amount of money was $20,000. There should be bitter regrets that modest expenditure was never made.
Duke’s ultimate cost is anyone’s guess. Fines and mitigation, which will far exceed $100 million, may be just the beginning. A half-dozen lawsuits already have been filed.
Thursday’s agreement includes a stipulation that Duke can’t pass fines and related expenses to customers. Shareholders are at risk and have a right to complain they were put there by the negligence and misjudgments of Duke executives.
The public was poorly served, too. Although drinking water was not compromised and the river seems to be clean again, potential long-term effects, particularly to organisms at the bottom of the food chain, aren’t known. Most of the coal ash, which contains toxic metals, sank into the sediment along the river bottom. The possible impact will require monitoring far into the future.
Some lessons were offered, which should be embraced in a state political climate where environmental regulations are under assault. Trusting corporations to do the right thing is not wise public policy. Government must keep and enforce reasonable rules to guard against shoddy, negligent practices that can harm land, water and air.
Duke finally seems to have come clean about the genesis of the Dan River disaster, thanks to the initiative of federal prosecutors. Not fully known yet is the extent to which state regulators, going back many years, may have been complicit in the neglect. Whatever is learned about that, the Dan River spill can be blamed primarily on Duke executives who ignored warnings and let it happen.
