A broken pipe funneled 30,000 tons of toxic coal ash into the Dan River in North Carolina earlier this month, turning it gray. The pipe has been plugged, but the spill has reignited a fight over storage of coal ash, and scrutiny of the state regulators responsible for monitoring it.
The U.S. Justice Department began a criminal investigation into North Carolina's coal ash ponds and the state's environmental officials last week. The inquiry widened Wednesday, The Associated Press reports, as federal prosecutors called for 20 state employees to testify before a grand jury.
A Statewide Concern
One-hundred-thirty miles south of the Dan River spill, Mark Levi walks to a dock at the back of his house in Charlotte, on the bank of a different river, the Catawba. About a mile away is the Allen steam plant. Its coal ash ponds are six times the size of the ones that leaked at the Dan River plant.
"To us the worst case scenario is the dams on those ash ponds break, and it all dumps in the river right here. And, our backyards — what we chose to live on the lake for — is dead," he says.
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