NCDENR

Environmental groups released a report earlier this week that suggests a shuttered Duke Coal plant is seeping the chemical selenium into Sutton Lake, killing nearly a million blue gill per year. State numbers are not as clear cut about the fish’s health.

A judge has allowed environmental groups to join a state lawsuit against Duke Energy over water pollution from coal plants.  The judge granted the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation, which will be represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, the ability to intervene in the case today, essentially making the organization a second plaintiff. In the lawsuit, the state accuses Duke of allowing coal ash ponds to leak contamination into groundwater, including at the G.G. Allen and Marshall Steam Stations in the Charlotte region.

State water regulators and Duke Energy want to wrap up a lawsuit over possible contamination to rivers that feed water supplies for Asheville and Charlotte. The state released a final proposed settlement Tuesday, but environmental groups say it lacks teeth.

North Carolina’s environment agency has taken the unusual step of returning a federal grant to study streams and wetlands that could be harmed by hydraulic fracturing for natural gas.

The N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources had itself recommended last year that baseline water-quality data be collected where drilling might occur. The information would help document any problems linked to drilling.