Dive Summary:

• Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, told Charlotte Magazine this month that the company will eventually clean up ash at the Riverbend plant threatening Charlotte’s drinking water supply.
• “We’ll ultimately end up cleaning up all that,” Rogers said. Duke closed the Riverbend plant in April and plans to store the coal ash there and monitor it indefinitely. But environmentalists and the state are asking, how long is 'ultimately.'
• Last week, the state of North Carolina added the Riverbend plant to an existing law suit contending the safety of coal ash, some leaking from two giant lagoons into the Mountain Island Lake. Contamination from Duke's lagoons "poses a serious danger to the health, safety and welfare of the people of North Carolina and serious harm to the water resources of the state," the state said. But Duke contends the leakage is normal and harmless.

From the article:

“Frank Holleman, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, points out that the cost of moving the ash could end up looking cheap compared with the alternative. ‘If there were a catastrophic failure at Mountain Island Lake,’ Holleman told the Observer editorial board, ‘the legal, financial and reputational damage to the corporation and its officers would be staggering. It’s an extreme corporate risk.’”