Via Charlotte magazine’s article, “Jim Roger’s Closing Act,” by Lisa Rab.

Excerpt:

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers is slight, jovial, deeply tanned, and silver-haired, intent on charming the small group of strangers touring the college science building with him. Moments before entering the lab, he popped his head into a lecture hall full of students and greeted them in his languid Kentucky drawl. “Hi there, how y’all doin’? You learning anything?”

Reed Perkins, the man leading the tour with unflagging enthusiasm, is an environmental science professor at Queens. He studies, among other things, urban streams and the impact of land use on Charlotte’s watersheds. He’s aware that coal ash ponds from a Duke power plant are leaking toxins into the city’s drinking water supply 16 miles from here. But of course he doesn’t mention it.

…

Meanwhile, it’s unclear what will happen to the Riverbend ash ponds. “We’ll ultimately end up cleaning up all that,” Rogers said. He paused, and he was not laughing anymore as he admonished: “But we’re shutting down the plants two years earlier, so people should be happy with that—but [they’re] not happy enough.”