Dive Brief:
- Duke Energy is sending about a million and a half tons of coal ash from sites in North Carolina and South Carolina to be buried in a Georgia landfill.
- The coal ash will be placed in a landfill in Banks County, GA by Waste Management workers. The company said the coal ash will be isolated and should not be a threat to ground water.
- Duke Energy representative Erin Culbert likened the pollutants in coal ash to pollutants found in municipal waste, according to WGCL, in Homer, GA.
Dive Insight:
Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division categorizes coal ash as a non-hazardous material. In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that coal ash can now be disposed of in landfills, under its new classification as a non-hazardous material.
Duke Energy is required by North Carolina’s 2014 Coal Ash Management Act to deposit into a containment facility coal ash from four different sites by August 2019.
