One of the speakers was Larry Mathis of Belmont. His home is near the Allen plant. Several months ago he was warned that his well, and about two hundred others, produced water with higher than average levels of certain toxins. Dozens of residents of Rowan County who live near the Buck Steam plant were told the same thing.On Tuesday, Duke Energy held several events of its own. The first was for the press at its Dan River plant, the same plant responsible for 2014’s third-largest coal ash spill in U.S. history. Though I was not allowed to attend the press event, I was allowed to attend its event in Charlotte’s Mountain Island Lake community where citizens were taken on a tour of the company’s Riverbend plant. You can learn more about the company’s coal-ash plans at Riverbend here.“Our water was found to have 38 times the state standard for vanadium," Mathis said. “So far, the best that Duke can do is just to provide us some bottled water, and only for about two more months.”