A year ago, I wrote about how North Carolina’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources was reviewing the pollution permits on the Catabwa River — as they do every five years — for Charlotte magazine. (Read “One Man and a River” here.) A year ago, the permits were already expired. Since then, the state conducted its review, collected comments from the public and held a public meeting.
At the public meeting, it was clear that the people who wanted less regulation in the permits worked for Duke Energy and the people who wanted more were average citizens, though even Mecklenburg County sent written comments asking for tighter regulations.
Unfortunately, NCDENR chose not to listen to the people who drink the river’s water and clean the pollution out of it, but, instead, sided mostly with those who use the water to generate electricity.
From the Catawba Riverkeeper, David Merryman:
“This is outrageous! Despite public input and outcry, (Department of Water Quality) still plans to allow the unlimited release of Arsenic, Mercury and Selenium into our drinking water supply,” exclaims Catawba Riverkeeper David Merryman. “We’ve already learned that our fish are contaminated with PCBs; you can’t keep pumping toxic heavy metals into the River, too. The costs of removing these poisons should not be passed along to the water drinkers of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Gastonia, East Lincoln County, Mount Holly, Rock Hill, and Mooresville.”
The final permits have added some requirements that were suggested during the public hearing and by the Division’s Public Hearing Officer, including weekly coal ash pond dam structural integrity inspections, a one-time fish tissue monitoring for arsenic, mercury and selenium, a re-evaluation of thermal discharge impacts to the biological community, semiannual in-stream monitoring for several heavy metals and total dissolved solids, and, very importantly, a coal ash pond closure plan for Riverbend Steam Station on Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s primary source of drinking water.
“Appeal is an option I am not willing to eliminate,” continues Merryman. “I am pleased to see that these final permits incorporated some of the comments and recommendations suggested by the public, but the Division of Water Quality must protect our water’s quality.”
And, now, I’ll assert that this is exactly the type of situation that leads people to believe that their government doesn’t pay any attention to them, their concerns or their health and, instead, bows to the wishes of corporations.
Is that an accurate assertion? Do you feel like our government officials listen to you? I’d love to read your thoughts on the matter in the comments.
Rhiannon “Rhi” Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing’s CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2011.
The extraordinary cooperativeness of federal and state regulatory agencies is being bought with coal dollars, and abetted by pro-industry puppeteers with their hands on Obama’s strings. The coal industry’s growing list of paid apologists now includes CNN, which, according to the following After the Press video report, aired a story recently about a giant coal ash dump on the W. Va./Penn border – with the “report” in fact sponsored by an airbrushed spot for The Coalition for Clean Coal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lwr2SA5Pec
Folks, you gotta focus on what can and cannot be regulated. The Division of Water Quality can reguire compliance with stream standards, but not those items for which standards do not exist.
Focus on what is regulatable.
Go nuke and end the debate.
Where is the coverage in the local papers? Same with the PCB findings. One little blurb in each paper and then nothing else mentioned. Is it because people just don’t care about this stuff?
I love CREATIVE LOAFING but it should be my main source of local entertainment news NOT my MAIN source for important local news. (keep up the good work though)
Obviously zero pollution is not attainable, but at the very least the new permits should require more testing of the waters and the fish so we have a better idea of what we are dealing with!
I agree with Frank. Funny how the folks who point with obsessive lunacy at Europe’s healthcare oddly ignore the fact that France, for example, generates 70% of its electricity via nuclear.
Thorium produces 200x as much power as uranium and leaves far less waste. We built a successful thorium plant two generations ago:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/science/stories/2010/03/07/thorium-art-gc67nvgb-1.html