- Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) says heavy rains from Hurricane Florence caused the collapse of a slope at a coal ash landfill at the closed Sutton Power Station near Wilmington, N.C.
- DUK says ~2K cubic yards of ash - enough to fill 180 dump trucks - were displaced, and the contaminated runoff likely flowed into the plant's cooling pond; it is not yet known whether the weir that drains the lake was open or if contamination may have flowed into the Cape Fear River.
- DUK believes the incident does not pose a risk to public health or the environment.
- The coal-fired Sutton plant was retired in 2013, and DUK has been excavating millions of tons of ash from old waste pits and removing it to safer lined landfills constructed on the property.
- DUK also says it has restored power to 637K customers in North Carolina and South Carolina out of 1.1M total outages caused by the storm.
- Now read: Premier Oil: With The Catcher Oil Field Up And Running, Net Debt Should Decrease Fast
Original article