Last of three parts

This story has been updated to include additional comments from Bill Norton, a spokesperson for Duke Energy.

WILMINGTON – A Duke University study of three former coal ash discharge lakes in North Carolina found Sutton Lake to have the highest levels of selenium before Hurricane Florence. Now researchers are turning to the long-term effects of the coal ash breach here.

Selenium is an element found in coal ash that can cause deformities and impair growth and reproduction in fish and other aquatic life.

Published last year, the study, led by environmental scientist Jessica Brandt, included Mayo Lake near Roxboro and Mountain Lake Island near Charlotte. Samples of surface water, bottom sediment and fish were collected from each lake in 2015.

Tests showed 85 percent of all fish muscle samples examined from Sutton Lake contained selenium levels above the Environmental Protection Agency’s, or EPA, threshold.

A Duke Energy spokesperson points to the company’s own testing as well as that of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission.

“Duke Energy has conducted a continuous robust sampling program at Sutton Lake following Hurricane Florence assessing a wide range of trace elements, including selenium, in both the total and dissolved forms,” company spokesperson Bill Norton said in an email. “Both Duke Energy’s fisheries sampling program and the North Carolina Wildlife Resources sampling program continue to show Sutton Lake has a healthy and sustaining fish community, despite what others who have not conducted continuous sampling in the lake may claim.”

Sutton Lake’s year-round mild water temperatures have made it a popular fishing spot for anglers throughout the years.

The 1,100-acre lake is one of a few places where largemouth bass may be caught throughout the winter.

Heat from the plant creates a long growing season in the lake, which is also popular among recreational boaters.

The reservoir was formed in 1972 after Carolina Power & Light impounded Catfish Creek to create a cooling source for its coal-fired L.V. Sutton Power Station.

Though the lake was for years classified as a private cooling pond, it has been open to the public since its creation thanks to an easement between the state and CP&L. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission manages a boat ramp at the lake.

Nearly four years ago, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, reclassified the lake from a private cooling pond to a public resource, a move aimed to protect the lake with more stringent water quality standards. Sutton Lake has the same classification as the nearby Cape Fear River.

The state also raised the classification to “high hazard” for two dams that are part of the coal ash impoundments next to Sutton Lake. State officials annually inspect both dams.

The dams were inspected within a month of Hurricane Florence’s Sept. 14 landfall in Wrightsville Beach. No major problems were found, state officials reported.

Understanding the Potential Long-Term Effects

Duke Energy has closed public access to Sutton Lake since the storm.

When access is reopened, environmental scientists plan to begin testing Sutton Lake’s sediments, a method they say will be most effective in revealing any potential long-term effects from the coal ash breach.

Brandt plans to examine whether sediments were stirred up by the storm and what impacts that disturbance to the sediments may have in the lake.

“In a lake we’re not seeing the same flow rate as in a river so water that comes into that system stays in that system longer,” she said. “That allows contaminants that are attached to particulates more time to settle. Some elements can be released over these disturbance events.”

Duke University professor Avner Vengosh said water quality will continue to be monitored, but he did not expect to see a huge amount of coal ash contaminants from those tests. He too plans to collect sediment samples.

“We’ll have to get samples of sediments at the bottom of the lake and try to determine if there’s coal ash in the sediment,” he said.

Vengosh’s research has found that cooling lakes receive the highest levels of ash contaminants.

“You have a long-term accumulation of sediments with coal ash,” Vengosh said. “If you go into a few centimeters of sediments you find huge concentrations of arsenic. That’s the chronic thing that’s happening all over North Carolina.”

Scratching the Surface

Duke Energy does not plan to test sediments in the lake or the river and state officials did not respond to questions by press time about whether the state would conduct further sediment tests.

“We’ve (Duke Energy) found that water testing is much more informative than sediment testing in determining potential ash impacts,” Norton, the Duke Energy spokesperson, said in an email.

“We’ve found that water testing is much more informative than sediment testing in determining potential ash impacts,”

Bill Norton, Duke Energy spokesperson

He pointed to the company’s experience in testing water following the 2014 coal ash pond spill in the Dan River.

Duke Energy found that the heavy metals that turned up in post-spill sediment samples taken from the river were most related to garden soil, not coal ash, Norton said.

“Sediment testing in the Dan River following the 2014 ash release showed that the substances we tested for were present throughout the river, both upstream of the release and below it,” Norton said. “Because these same elements are naturally occurring, sediment testing did not provide definitive data to establish the presence of coal ash. To be sure, the Dan River incident was catalytic for Duke Energy in terms of accelerating our basin closure plans. But in terms of the river’s health, the Dan River returned to normal in a matter of just a few days after that 2014 incident.”

Tests conducted by a team of Appalachian State University researchers tell a different story.

Using canoes to gather samples with a trowel and corer, researchers collected sediments from the riverbed and center channel of the Dan River on Oct. 5, 2014, upstream and downstream of the power plant.

Sediment samples were collected again in mid-May 2015 in five locations.

“In the Dan River research we were able to identify coal ash in the bottom sediment using magnetic methods as well as microscopically,” said Ellen Cowan, the project’s lead researcher and professor at the university’s Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences. “From the ash composition we were able to identify ash from the initial release as well as subsequent reworking from upstream. Coal ash particles are in the silt size and therefore they settle from the water column to the bottom.”

The ash basins at the Sutton plant remained stable throughout the flooding, Norton said, and company officials have “not observed that ash from our basins was displaced.”

“Thus it’s entirely reasonable to conclude – as the state’s and our water samples scientifically prove – that the Wilmington-area public and environment are safe from coal ash impacts,” he said.

In the case of Sutton Lake, Cowan said, contaminants can re-contaminate the water column as they are released over time.

“It is therefore important to test samples from the lake and river bottom for the presence of coal ash and its associated contaminants,” she said.

Vengosh agreed.

His work in the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority coal ash spill, “clearly demonstrated that the river sediments fill with coal ash was the major problem, not the river water.”

“That is why TVA worked to take out the coal ash from the river bottom sediments,” Vengosh said. “I am afraid that Duke Energy is not revealing the true information here. The bottom line is that there is no any other way but testing the river bottom sediments for evaluating possible coal ash migration from the landfill to Sutton Lake and also to the Cape Fear River.”

Second of three parts

WILMINGTON – Duke Energy will collect and test water samples in Sutton Lake and the Cape Fear River through November.

“We will extend that effort if data demonstrate it’s needed,” Duke Energy spokesperson Bill Norton said in an email statement.

The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, approved Duke Energy’s monitoring plan. State officials did not respond to questions by press time about whether it has plans for further testing.

‘No Evidence’ of Harm

Duke Energy maintains that only a small amount of ash and ash by-products escaped and no significant harm had been done to the lake or the river.

In a Sept. 19 update the company posted on its website, Duke Energy reported inspectors at the site had identified cenospheres in the lake, “but water sample results show no evidence of a coal ash impact to the lake or the water entering the river.”

Cenospheres are lightweight, hollow beads made primarily of alumina and silica that are produced as a byproduct of coal combustion.

The company collected water samples over a period of a few days beginning Sept. 16. The test results showed no arsenic reading above 1.11 micrograms per liter.

Testing from three locations in Sutton Lake showed that coal ash contamination was higher than in the river, with arsenic levels reaching as high as 7.37 micrograms per liter.

Coal ash contamination levels are routinely higher than those found in the Cape Fear, according to the company.

DEQ has validated Duke’s test results.

DEQ’s Division of Water Resources took water samples at the breached lake dam Sept. 22 and again on Sept. 25, 26 and 27. The division also took water samples about 1 mile downriver daily between Sept. 25-27.

The lab analysis showed all metals, including arsenic, selenium, boron and other heavy metals associated with coal ash were below state water quality standards.

The one exception was dissolved copper, which “showed a slight elevation” that could be a result of extreme area flooding, according to the state. The agency pointed out that copper levels were the same upstream of the breach.

“A lot of pollutants were released in the flood waters,” said Donna Lisenby, global advocacy manager for the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Junkyards, poultry and hog farms and wastewater treatment plants were among a number of pollution sources swept up by floodwaters that poured into the river.

Waterkeeper Alliance was there Sept. 21, the day the coal ash pond breached, releasing its contents into Sutton Lake and spilling into the river.

“That day was when the pollution levels were at its highest,” Lisenby said. “We think the highest coal ash pollution load went into Sutton Lake.”

Waterkeeper Alliance took its samples to Pace Analytical, a certified lab based in Asheville, that showed arsenic levels at 71 times higher than the state safety standard for water quality.

A water sample collected from the largest breach of the lake had an arsenic level of 32.8 micrograms per liter, three times higher than the state’s fish consumption water quality standard of 10 micrograms per liter.

Test results also showed selenium levels of 22 micrograms per liter, more than four times the state Aquatic Life and Secondary Recreation standard, according to the alliance.

Duke officials continue to refute the environmental group’s test results.

“We are pleased that the state’s test results align well with the extensive water sampling Duke Energy continues to perform, demonstrating that Cape Fear River quality is not harmed by Sutton plant operations,” Norton said in an email. “These results, combined with dozens of data points gathered by Duke energy over many days, make it clear that the three samples shared by environmental groups (Oct. 3) are extreme outliers that fail to paint an accurate picture of river quality.”

No Better, Perhaps Worse

Dennis Lemly has been studying environmental risks and aquatic impacts of coal mining and coal-fired industries for more than 35 years.

The focus of his research is selenium, a naturally occurring element that is present in sedimentary rocks, shales, coal and phosphate deposits and soils and concentrated in coal ash.

Exposure in juvenile fish and aquatic invertebrates can cause deformities and stunt growth and reproduction.

In 2013, Lemly, an environmental consultant specializing in ecotoxicology and former research biologist with the U.S. Department of Forest Service, collected and assessed juvenile fish from Sutton Lake during a five-month period.

That was the same year more than 40 years of coal-fired operations ended at the Sutton power station, which has since been converted into a 625-megawatt natural gas plant.

Lemly’s biological assessment showed that discharges from the plant were causing selenium poisoning in young fish and reducing their chances of survival.

Lemly looked at the Duke Energy’s September water sample lab results.

“There’s a big red flag there,” he said. “Selenium in Sutton Lake is higher now than it was in the recent past. It’s not improved since my study years ago. Nothing has improved. Conditions now are no different. The waters are the same.”

More troubling, he said, is the fact that the levels reported by Duke Energy are substantially higher than the Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality standard for aquatic life.

The EPA in 2016 updated its selenium threshold for aquatic life. The state has not adopted the EPA’s new standard.

“There’s a major flaw in the premise that Duke can say that they’re meeting the state guidelines,” Lemly said. “The state is behind the curve. The state of North Carolina has not come to the realization for the need to revise their standards and Duke can still claim plausible deniability. Fish are being poisoned and Duke walks away. That whole place is in the Cape Fear River floodplain. It just makes no sense logically. There is no legitimate basis in terms of environmental protection to put a landfill in a flood plain.”

Next: Selenium levels, before and after the flood

First of three parts

WILMINGTON – As a monstrous Hurricane Florence closed in on North Carolina’s coast, Duke Energy launched its largest-ever mobilization of resources and announced it was taking steps to storm-ready its coal ash basins and cooling ponds in the east, including one just outside the city in the bull’s-eye of the storm.

Spokespeople for the Charlotte-based energy company rebutted statements made by environmentalists last month who raised concerns about the storm’s potential to breach open ash basins, spilling mucky, gray sludge into nearby waterways.

The company’s ongoing efforts to close its basins by either removing water to cap the ponds or excavate them reduced the flooding threat, Duke Energy officials told news reporters.

“We got a head start on a lot of the industry,” one company spokesperson said to the Los Angeles Times. “We think that positions us well going into the storm.”

Less than a week after Hurricane Florence made landfall Sept. 14 in Wrightsville Beach, the company reported that about 2,000 cubic yards of soil and ash – enough to fill about two-thirds of an Olympic-sized swimming pool – spilled from the landfill at L.V. Sutton Power Station near Wilmington.

After the Category 1 hurricane’s strike, one that dumped around 9 trillion gallons of water on North Carolina over four days, water samples were collected in Sutton Lake and the lower Cape Fear River.

Duke Energy, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, and environmental activist group Waterkeeper Alliance have all collected samples on various days, in various locations within the river and the lake.

The results have ultimately pitted those of Duke Energy and the state against the Waterkeeper Alliance, equating to a he-said, she-said that has unfolded in daily news reports, leaving readers unsure of where the truth lies.

To get to the answer of how much, if any, environmental harm has been caused by coal ash spilling into the lake and river, sample collectors must literally dig deeper, according to several academic researchers who’ve been studying coal ash for years.

The ‘Real Danger’

Disputing the water sample test results that have been published by the energy company, the state and environmental advocates put the focus solely on whether the levels of ash contaminants in the lake and river exceed government limits.

“It doesn’t tell you whether or not there’s been a large transport or not of coal ash into the river,” said Avner Vengosh, a Duke University professor who specializes in geochemistry and water quality. “That’s the real danger.”

He called the sample test results, “noise playing into the hands of Duke Energy.”

“The likelihood to find anything in a flooding event is very, very low,” Vengosh said. “The ability to measure the coal ash contaminants in river water during flooding is limited because the mobilization of contaminants from coal ash to the water as dissolved constituents would be very small compared to the large volume of the flood water that would dilute any signal. Even if there is some organization of metal, it’s not going to immediately coalesce. It doesn’t tell you whether or not there’s been a large transport or not of coal ash into the river.”

Coal ash is a toxic cocktail, the recipe of which includes mercury, arsenic, lead and chromium – chemicals that can cause cancer, irreversible brain damage and other diseases in people and wildlife when found in high concentrations.

Sediment testing will determine whether coal ash contaminants have settled at the bottom of the Cape Fear River and Sutton Lake, Vengosh said.

His work with a team of researchers in Tennessee following the largest coal-ash spill in history demonstrated that the major problem was not coal ash in the river water – it was coal ash in the river sediments.

The Dec. 22, 2008, catastrophe occurred when a dike failed at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant, releasing 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash into the Emory and Clinch rivers. The release in Roane County, Tennessee, about 30 miles west of Knoxville, also covered about 300 acres outside the coal ash dewatering and storage areas.

As part of the massive, multi-year, billion-dollar cleanup, workers dredged more than 3 million cubic yards of ash from the Emory River.

Less than six years after the TVA spill, a pipe at a coal ash pond at Duke Energy’s retired Dan River Steam Station near Eden, North Carolina, collapsed, dumping up to 39,000 tons of coal ash into the river.

Ash from the Feb. 2, 2014, spill spread as far as 70 miles downstream.

By the spring of 2014, the energy company hired a contractor to vacuum-dredge about 2,500 tons of coal ash sitting on the riverbed of the Dan River.

Duke Energy retrieved about 10 percent of the ash from several deposits by dredging and “similar measures,” according to a February 2015 Greensboro News & Record article.

A year after the Dan River spill, Duke Energy officials referenced scientific surveys that showed evidence the levels of coal ash contamination in the sediment downstream were diminishing based on sediment samples.

But results of one sediment study published last year tell a different story in the Dan River and Vengosh warns against comparing the spills that occurred in Tennessee and the Dan River with the breach last month near Wilmington.

“It’s different than a spill like the one at the Dan River or TVA, which were normal conditions where a huge amount of coal ash was moved in the river system,” he said. “Here we’re talking about flooding, which contained a huge amount of sediment and coal ash. Even in the TVA coal ash spill (without a major flooding event) the open river water quality was only slightly affected as compared to water under restricted flow or water entrapped within the river bottom sediments.”

Next: Continued testing, long-term risks