Utility agrees to pay $102 million penalty for water pollution

Duke Energy Corp. pleaded guilty Thursday to criminal pollution charges and agreed to $102 million in federal penalties stemming from a February 2014 spill of coal ash waste.

Three of Duke’s subsidiaries formally pleaded guilty to nine violations of the Clean Water Act at various North Carolina facilities. Of the total penalty, $68 million was in fines and $34 million will go to environmental and conservation efforts in North Carolina and Virginia, which is downstream from some of the Duke facilities

Four of the criminal charges were directly related to the 2014 spill, in which tens of thousands of tons of coal ash waste from a coal-fired power plant spilled into North Carolina’s Dan River.

{mosads}The remaining charges came from investigations federal officials conducted into Duke’s other coal ash storage operations.

“Over 216 million Americans rely on surface water as their source of drinking water. Duke Energy put that precious resource at risk in North Carolina as the result of their negligence,” Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) enforcement office, said in a statement.

“Companies that cut corners and contaminate waters on which communities depend, as Duke did here, will be held accountable,” she said.

The EPA worked with the Justice Department in pursuing the case and the charges, which were filed in February.

“The massive coal ash spill into North Carolina’s Dan River last year was a crime and it was the result of repeated failures by Duke Energy’s subsidiaries to exercise controls over coal ash facilities,” said John Cruden, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s environmental division.

“The terms of these three plea agreements will help prevent this kind of environmental disaster from reoccurring in North Carolina and throughout the United States by requiring Duke subsidiaries to follow a rigorous and independently verifiable program to ensure they comply with the law.”

Duke confirmed the guilty pleas and said it has used the case as a learning opportunity.

“We’ve used the Dan River incident as an opportunity to set a new, industry-leading standard for the management of coal ash,” the company said in a statement, adding that it is working on “innovative and sustainable” plans for its coal ash basins.

Coal ash contains concentrated amounts of various toxic substances found in coal, like lead, boron, chromium and mercury.

The spill added pressure on EPA officials to set the first federal standards for coal ash disposal, which the agency finalized in December.