The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists two area coal ash ponds as hazardous. Guess where they are? Just upstream of Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s main water source.
Duke Energy’s 80-year-old Riverbend Coal Plant Steam Station is only a dozen miles from the center of Uptown Charlotte, straight west on Brookshire Boulevard. The coal ash ponds are located behind the plant.
See for yourself. Here’s a link to Google Maps, where you can see the locations of the EPA’s high hazard coal ash waste sites. Notice how many of them are in North Carolina.
The plants and ponds sit on the northern end of the lake, the primary source of drinking water for about 750,000 people in Charlotte, Gastonia, Pineville, Mount Holly and Belmont.Coal ash is a slurry of fly and bottom ash produced by burning coal for power production, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Coal ash contains concentrated forms of dangerous heavy metals such as arsenic, selenium, lead and thallium.
Adding Riverbend’s ash ponds to the top 44 list isn’t a comment on the structural integrity of the ponds or the possibility that they will fail. But the list does serve to warn the public of the significant damage or loss of life likely should the ponds fail, the report states.
More from The Carolina Weekly Newspaper Group.
Remember Tennessee’s coal ash spill this past December?
This article appears in Jun 30 – Jul 7, 2009.
So, Frank, you’re saying we should ignore the coal ash ponds behind an 80-year-old coal plant that are sitting atop our area’s drinking water source … and that the author is out of line for bringing the situation to our attention?
And that makes sense how?
Seriously, Frank. What’s your purpose here? To antagonize a media outlet that ignores you?
Why don’t you spend more time playing chess and less time spreading vitriolic falsehoods, you poor boy.
Frank. The coal plant is 80 years old. What nuclear power options were there in 1929?
And, as far as being hate-filled — Yeah, I think the readers can look at your comments and the other person’s comment and decide for themselves who the hate-filled comment poster is.
Take this one sentence from you, alone, “Your crazy little interpeting [sic] machine called a brain is just misfiring all over the place.” (Complete with a misspelled word, I might add.)
You’ve got issues, Frank. Seek help.
I hope your code review is better
than your prose! You mentioned Chess. Do you want to play a game?
Better yet, how about If I beat the ever-lovin shit out of you in a winner take all contest? Naah, that would deny CL readers your one redeeming quality, entertainment value.
But most of all it would infringe on your right to express
your views’ as maimed and malformed as they may be. Flame on!