WUNC: “On a recent, sunny morning, Brian Williams stood on the banks of the Dan River in Eden, North Carolina. Water flowed down the river quickly and calmly.
Ten years ago, scenes along this same spot were anything but calm.
For decades, Duke Energy’s Dan River Steam Station burned coal to produce power. The toxic coal ash created as a byproduct of that process was put into a small, man-made body of water called an ash basin.
On February 2, 2014, a stormwater pipe underneath the ash basin broke, sending 39,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of ash pond water into the Dan River….
In part because of state regulations and legal settlements, including a landmark 2020 agreement, Duke Energy is in the process of closing all of its coal plants and moving all of its coal ash from basins into lined landfills….
When asked about getting justice by having Duke Energy clean up its coal ash basins, Williams thought carefully for a moment.
“Well, it’s never enough. But there’s only so much you can do, and you can’t reverse time,” he said. “So I don’t see it as justice served. I see it as lessons learned. And I think as we move down the road, we won’t make those same mistakes again.””