Enviros Will Sue To End Dominion Coal Ash Pollution of Elizabeth River

"On Thursday, the Southern Environmental Law Center, representing the Sierra Club, sent notice to Dominion Virginia Power of their intention to bring suit under the Clean Water Act to clean up leaking coal ash pits at the Chesapeake Energy Center (CEC) on the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River in Chesapeake, Virginia.

For over a decade, Dominion has known that over one million cubic yards of coal ash stored at the CEC are illegally leaching high levels of arsenic, cobalt, sulfide, and other dangerous pollutants into the groundwater and two waterways popular for recreational activities—the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River and Deep Creek. In the last three years alone, concentrations of arsenic, a known carcinogen, have been found in the groundwater near the site as high as 30 times the state standard.

Dominion is in the processing of closing the coal-burning units at the CEC, which currently stores over sixty years of coal ash waste onsite in unlined, leaking pits and a landfill built on top of the old pits. Recently, Dominion prepared a closure plan for its ash storage facilities at the site, which proposes to continue indefinitely the decades-long contamination by leaving all coal ash in place and covering it with a plastic liner and dirt. If approved by the state, the plan would only continue the long legacy of polluting the Elizabeth River."

The Augusta Free Press had the story December 19, 2014.