Qualla: 2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill

2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USFWS, CC BY-SA 4.0. The pipe was forty-eight inches across, made of corrugated metal, and had been buried for decades under a coal-ash pond at the Dan River Steam Station in Eden, North Carolina. On the afternoon of February 2, 2014, a security guard at the retired coal plant noticed the water level in the pond was dropping. By the time crews understood what was happening - that the storm pipe had ruptured at the bottom of an unlined impoundment and was now venting the pond's contents directly into the river - the Dan was already turning gray for twenty miles downstream. The pipe stayed broken and draining for almost a week before it was finally plugged.

Image: USFWS | CC BY-SA 4.0

2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill: Thirty-Nine Thousand Tons

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EPA, Public domain. Coal ash is the gritty residue left when a power plant burns coal. It is laced with arsenic, selenium, copper, iron, zinc, and lead. The cheap way to store it is to mix it with water and let it settle in a clay-lined or unlined pond. The Dan River Steam Station had ceased operati...

Image: EPA | Public domain

2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill: A Regulator Stripped to the Bones

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EPA, Public domain. The New York Times reported that Governor Pat McCrory's administration had directed the state's environmental agency to minimize its regulatory role in the years before the spill. McCrory had worked for Duke Energy for nearly three decades before he became governor. Environmental...

Image: EPA | Public domain

2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill: Criminal Negligence

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EPA, Public domain. Internal documents pulled in the federal probe showed that company officials had known for years about leaks at multiple coal ash impoundments, including Eden, and had declined to give plant administrators the money they were requesting to monitor and mitigate. The U.S. Departmen...

Image: EPA | Public domain

2014 Dan River Coal Ash Spill: Thirty-Two Ponds, Five Billion Dollars

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit EPA, Public domain. The Dan River spill changed the political math in Raleigh. The state legislature ordered Duke Energy to close all 32 of its remaining coal ash ponds in North Carolina by 2029. In April 2019 the state ordered Duke to dig up millions of tons of ash at six of its power plants - the ...

Image: EPA | Public domain