Broad River Alliance Archives

3rd Annual Sarah Sweep!

Join the Broad River Alliance on Sept. 29 for the third annual “Sarah Sweep,” a day-long event to help clean up the Broad River! The event is held to honor the memory of Sarah Spencer, a former river enthusiast and volunteer. Participants in the river cleanup will meet at the Double Shoals Mill at 199 Old Mill Road in Shelby, NC at 10 A.M., and the cleanup will last until 3 or 4.

Sarah Spencer was 26-years-old when she died in a car crash on June 12, 2016. Her friends decided to honor her memory by starting the Sarah Sweep. “Sarah participated in her last official cleanup on my birthday as her gift to me,” Sarah’s mother, Judy Spencer, remembers. “I was told that she did a cleanup every time she was on the river. She always wanted to pick up just one item of trash until there was absolutely no more room in the kayak or canoe.”

After the cleanup, all are welcome to join the afterparty at the Double Shoals Mill for brats (both carnivore and vegetarian options) and vegetables hot off the grill. Food will be served starting at 5 P.M., and live music will begin at 5:30. The lineup is as follows:

Dale Brittain – 5:30 P.M. – 7 P.M.

Roadside Alice – 7 P.M. – 8:30 P.M.

Red Crayon 8:30 P.M. – 10 P.M.

For the cleanup, participants should bring a boat, water, lunch, sunscreen and gloves. There is a suggested $10 donation for the afterparty to help pay for food and expenses. All profits will be split between Double Shoals Cotton Mill and the Broad River Alliance.

The following volunteers are needed:

River clean up: 20-30

Cooking/prep for the afterparty: 4

Door/gate: 6 (three shifts: 2-5:00, 5-8:00, and 8-10:00, with two people on each shift)

Riverkeepers Respond to Duke’s Coal Ash Dishonesty

Action Expired

Nov. 8 2017

Over the weekend, Duke Energy Spokesperson Danielle Peoples responded to MountainTrue’s paddle protest on the Broad River with multiple untrue statements about the dangers of coal ash and the extent of Duke’s pollution at their power plant in Cliffside, NC [“Battle over coal ash continues in Cliffside” (11/5/17)]. In a Letter-to-the-Editor for the Shelby Star, Western North Carolina’s Riverkeepers stand up for the truth on coal ash and our rivers and set the record straight.

It’s time for Duke Energy to come clean on coal ash pollution. In a recent article that ran in the Shelby Star [“Battle over coal ash continues in Cliffside” (11/5/17)], Duke Energy spokesperson Danielle Peoples made numerous misleading statements about the dangers of coal ash and the ongoing pollution that is happening at Cliffside.

First, Peoples tells the Star that Duke has “finished excavating the basin earlier this year.” Problem solved, right? Well, not exactly. There are three ash basins at Cliffside, and Duke Energy has only excavated its smallest one. The truth is that 90% of coal ash stored in ponds at that site remain in its two unlined pits, which continue to pollute area groundwater and the Broad River.

Inexplicably, People’s claim about Cliffside is compounded by a glaring error in the Star’s reporting — that Duke Energy has closed all of its coal ash ponds around the state. This isn’t true at the Allen and Marshall plants near Charlotte, the Belews Creek plant near Winston-Salem, and it isn’t true at Cliffside where Duke Energy continues to operate a very active pond that they sluice wet ash into and discharge wastewater out of every day. We know this because this is how they operate under their current wastewater permit, and that doesn’t count all the additional illegal discharges that we’ve found.

What does the future have in store for Cliffside? Duke says that capping these unlined pits will solve the problem, but if the company has its way the remaining coal ash will be left sitting in up to 50 feet* of groundwater, continuing to pollute our groundwater and the river for centuries.

The most dangerous of Peoples’ assertions is that coal ash is nonhazardous. Here she hides behind a regulatory and legal technicality. While it is true that the Environmental Protection Agency declined to regulate coal ash as “hazardous waste” under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the EPA was equally clear that “there is significant potential for [coal ash ponds] to leach hazardous constituents into groundwater, impair drinking water supplies and cause adverse impacts on human health and the environment.” The EPA has set health limits on the toxic heavy metals and other constituents found in the coal ash at Cliffside because they are dangerous to people.

Here in North Carolina, when a small business owner or company makes a mess, we expect them to clean it up. Duke Energy is the largest utility company in the country – they can handle it.

David Caldwell, Broad River Alliance Hartwell Carson, French Broad Riverkeeper Gray Jernigan, Green Riverkeeper Andy Hill, Watauga Riverkeeper

*The original version of this post said “60 feet” instead of “50 feet” of groundwater. The error has been corrected.

Want to get involved? Support our petition to make Duke Energy clean up their coal ash pollution of the Broad River and sign up for clean water action opportunities here.