Storm rains could cause a dump containing mercury, arsenic and lead to overflow into a North Carolina city’s water supply

A few thousand feet behind Godwin Vicki’s trailer home, concealed behind thick forest, is a dump of coal ash weighing over 2 million tons.

In North Carolina, hurricanes can be 'a tragedy or a lesson' Read more

“I wish it weren’t there,” said the 62-year-old, as her dog yapped by the plywood boards waiting to be nailed to windows. “We don’t know what to expect. Especially this time with all the rain.”

The ash is a byproduct of the now-defunct Weatherspoon coal power plant, closed in 2011, and is just one of more than two dozen ash basinsthat experts and environmental advocates warn could do catastrophic damage when Hurricane Florence makes landfall in the coming hours.

They contain potentially dangerous levels of mercury, arsenic and lead, and the collapse or spill of one of these dumps could potentially lead to the contamination of nearby rivers and waterways. The Weatherspoon plant backs straight on to the Lumber river, which supplies water to the entire city.

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Vicki, and her dog, will evacuate the area on Thursday. “I ain’t sticking around to see what happens,” she said. “But my husband will be here to watch over the property.”

Two years ago, when Hurricane Matthew hit North Carolina as a category one storm, flooding of a nearby creek in Lumberton flowed into one of the Weatherspoon plant’s former cooling ponds. That one did not contain corrosive ash, but at another dump further north near the city of Goldsboro, an unknown amount of ash flowed into the Neuse river after a basin was breached by the hurricane.

Florence, a far stronger storm, is expected to dump vastly more rain than Matthew, as its likely pathway lingers over the Carolinas for days, making it far more hazardous in relation to the state’s coal ash dumps.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Lewis, 29: ‘Matthew was like our Katrina.’ Photograph: Oliver Laughland/The Guardian

Residents of Lumberton remember the 2016 hurricane with palpable anxiety.

“Matthew was like our Katrina,” said 29-year-old Jeremy Lewis. The city went for seven days without water after the local water plant was overwhelmed by the flooding.

“People here were getting water out of the lakes. It was a disgusting situation,” said Lewis, a labourer at a local textile factory. “I’ve been freezing ice for the past four days, I ain’t going to let what happened then happen again,” he said.

None of the residents in Lumberton interviewed by the Guardian said they had received any guidance from local authorities about the potential dangers of the Weatherspoon ash basin.

Brandon Love, Lumberton’s deputy city manager, said the basin was downstream of the city’s water plant on the Lumber river.

“Personally, I don’t think it will have any effects. But that’s my layman’s interpretation,” he said, conceding he was not aware of any environmental impact assessment on the coal ash dump, which, he said, fell just outside the city limits.

The Robeson county water department, which manages supply for the broader region, did not respond to a request for comment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lumberton, North Carolina. Photograph: Oliver Laughland/The Guardian

Duke Energy, one of the largest electricity companies in the US, which manages dozens of coal ash sites in the state, said the company was posting monitoring staff to sites, including Weatherspoon, closest to the coast.

“We have a set of protocols we follow for inspections following heavy rain events, and site staff will perform those field inspections as needed as long as conditions are safe to do so,” said a company spokeswoman, Paige Sheehan.

The company has excavated 250,000 tons of coal ash from the Weatherspoon site, as part of efforts to clean up and close more than a dozen sites in the state after the company pleaded guilty to environmental crimes in 2015.

The plea occurred following another leak of up to 39,000 tons of coal ash into the Dan river in 2014.

Despite the state’s checkered history with its coal ash dumps, some residents in Lumberton were entirely unfazed by the looming hurricane’s scale and power, unprecedented in the region’s history. Robeson county voted 51.4% for Donald Trump, an ardent backer of coal power, in 2016.

Jackie Britt, 87, owner of Carolina Sales – a fishing boat dealer a few miles from the plant – has lived in the area his entire life.

“It ain’t nothing but ashes,” he said. “It’s been spilling off into the river for years, so why would I start worrying about it now? Me and my friends have been eating and drinking out of the river for years and 90% of them didn’t die young.”

He added: “All this environmentalism can kiss my ass.”