Cleaning Up Coal Ash
For well over a century, power plants across the country have burned coal to generate electricity. And for just as long, leftover coal ash has been dumped in open, unlined pits near the power plant, usually located on a river or lake. Every year, U.S. power plants produce 130 million tons of coal ash, which is the second largest waste stream in the country after municipal garbage.
Coal ash concentrates the toxic heavy metals found in coal, including arsenic, mercury, lead and selenium. Stored in unlined, wet impoundments, coal ash has been leaking these toxics into our groundwater and surface waters for years. Sometimes these impoundments collapse — with disastrous results.
Yet government regulations for coal ash management are either non-existent or sparse, and there is little enforcement of the regulations that do exist. In North Carolina, this lack of oversight — and the complicity between state regulators, elected officials and Duke Energy — came to a boiling point in February 2014 when one of Duke’s coal ash impoundments spilled 39 million tons of ash into the Dan River.
Citizens living near North Carolina’s 33 coal ash impoundments — all of which have leaked — have fought for transparency from Duke and the state, and for cleanup of the pollution that threatens their property value, health and family. Their actions forced this issue into the headlines of news networks and to the forefront of environmental justice conversations in the United States.
Appalachian Voices stood with these communities as we worked for years to compel Duke Energy and the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality to excavate coal ash from all the North Carolina sites and dispose of it either in lined, dry landfills, away from waterways, or by recycling it for concrete or other uses, provided it’s done in a manner that protects public health and the environment.
On Jan. 2, 2020, North Carolina announced a historic settlement with one of the state’s most powerful corporations and polluters, Duke Energy. The settlement requires Duke to move nearly 80 million tons of toxic coal ash at six of its power plants to properly lined landfills onsite or recycle it.
![se_coalash_graphic Learn information about specific coal ash impoundments in the South, including health threats and safety ratings on <a href="https://www.southeastcoalash.org/">Southeastcoalash.org</a>](https://appvoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/se_coalash_graphic.jpg)
Learn information about specific coal ash impoundments in the South, including health threats and safety ratings:
Additional Resources
Fact sheets, videos, links to academic research, and more
Sign Up to Act
Help us protect the health of our communities and waterways.
Latest News
Pipe Dreams: The push to expand natural gas infrastructure
Landowners whose property lies along a natural gas pipeline route worry about local impacts, while others warn of the long-term consequences that could come with a reliance on this fickle fuel.
Citizen Scientists Tackle Climate Change
Across the region, volunteers from all walks of life are recording when the dogwood blooms and when the warblers arrive. These citizen scientists are compiling observations that help researchers monitor subtle changes in seasonal events, and provide the backbone for extensive projects to track climate change.
State Legislative Updates
While lawmakers in Washington, D.C., might get most of the spotlight, the legislators in state capitols across the region are busy making — and blocking — laws that affect Appalachia’s land, air, water and people. Here’s the latest updates from state legislatures around the region
Elk Make Slow Return to Appalachia
When European colonists arrived in the 1400s, Eastern elk were the most widespread hooved animal on the continent, but the subspecies was declared extinct by 1880. Today, however, another type of elk are slowly returning to Appalachia.
The Stanback Trails
Little Table Rock Mountain Trail is the longest of three newly designated Stanback Trails along the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. It is located just a mile up the Parkway from the Heffner Gap Overlook at milepost 325.9, where a second Stanback Trail — the Rose Creek Trail — begins directly across the street.
South Fork Sharestead
In six years, Jonathan Towers has transformed his average American home into an energy-efficient, food-abundant powerhouse. By retrofitting the house to be energy efficient and maintaining a strong commitment to energy conservation, their utility bill has dropped 75 percent.