Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Over at Scrutiny Hooligans, somebody asked for more coverage of Progress Energy’s coal ash ponds here in Asheville. The call comes after the Tennessee disaster at a giant TVA power plant near Knoxville.
Well, hooligan Arratik did the Googling, so now everybody can go look at it.
Meantime, Mountain Xpress published a story online on Jan. 6 asking Progress Energy about its coal ash.
A Progress Energy spokesperson reports that the coal-ash storage ponds at its Asheville plant are closely monitored and safe. Following the Dec. 22 catastrophic failure of a retaining wall at a giant waste pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil coal-fired power plant west of Knoxville, Mountain Xpress inquired about the condition of such ponds in Western North Carolina.
“Our ash ponds are operating within all local, state and federal regulations,” says Progress Energy spokesperson Scott Sutton. At its Asheville Plant—located along the French Broad River at Lake Julian—the company has two storage ponds for coal ash, created when coal is burned to create electricity. One pond was created in 1964, when the Lake Julian plant first opened; this pond was closed in 1982, when Progress Energy built a second pond. The inactive pond, Sutton further explains, is now used as a wetland site that filters wastewater from the plant. It has a 90-foot earthen dam. The active, 50-acre pond, which can store 450 million gallons of coal ash, has a 95-foot-high earthen dam. Neither pond is lined; but current regulations do not require such ponds to be lined.
The Asheville Citizen-Times published an AP report and a local story on Saturday, Jan. 10. I won’t link to it because the Citizen-Times breaks its links, but you can find it at the newspaper’s web site.
