The day the river turned grey

[n2doc]

Posted on Feb 1, 2015
by Taft Wireback
EDEN — At 6 that morning, a guard at the Duke Energy plant made his rounds and noticed that the coal ash ponds by the river were iced over. That’s all — nothing dramatic or unusual for a cold February dawn.

But eight hours later, on that Super Bowl Sunday, that same guard checked again and did a double take. The water level in the larger of the two ponds looked suspiciously low.

By midnight, a platoon of environmental experts was on the scene at the Dan River Steam Station, trying to staunch the third-largest coal ash spill in U.S. history.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would later describe what happened that day at the retired power plant near Eden as the “sudden collapse” of a drainage pipe running under the main pond.

much more

http://www.news-record.com/news/dan_river/dan-river-coal-ash-disaster-an-accident-waiting-to-happen/article_344fbdf3-b6ed-5f6f-955c-91180c9d6915.html