The Editorial Board

USA TODAY

The nation's attention has moved on from Hurricane Florence, but the storm has left a toxic legacy in the Carolinas, where lax environmental laws and a warming planet are proving to be a bad combination.

For a troubling glimpse into a future where storms bloated by climate change not only cause widespread destruction but also rinse poisons into drinking water, look no further than the aerial footage of gray muck flowing from a flooded coal ash dump into the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina.

The ash problem is a reminder that coal is doubly destructive when it comes to the environment. Burning it is a potent source of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and the resulting powdery residue is a mix of toxic metals such as mercury, cadmium and arsenic.

Duke Energy, a North Carolina power company, is slowly shifting away from burning coal to generate electricity. But it's left with decades-old ash basins dangerously close to waterways.

OPPOSING VIEW:Coal-ash policies are not wrong-headed

When Florence dumped an average of 17.5 inches of rain over 14,000 square miles in September, ash dumps breached along the Cape Fear and in the city of Goldsboro a hundred miles north.

Last Friday, environmentalists found Goldsboro's drinking water source, the Neuse River, registering arsenic levels 18 times higher than state standards.

Duke is contesting those findings, and state sampling tests are pending.

Nor are heavy metals that can damage vital organs the only pollutants unleashed by the unusually soggy storm. Florence was the most destructive blow to North Carolina livestock in almost a generation, slaughtering millions of chickens and thousands of hogs.

Dozens of hog-waste lagoons overflowed, dispensing from one cesspool alone 2.2 million gallons of fecal sludge rife with pathogens such as salmonella.

Environmentalists fear that the health of 160,000 people could be at risk.

Such ruinous results are no surprise. Restrictions on pork production in North Carolina are notoriously lax. Many open-air hog-waste lagoons are without concrete or plastic liners, allowing pollutants to seep into ground aquifers. China has invested heavily in the state's pork processing because it's cheaper than raising and slaughtering hogs back home, where environmental rules are stricter.

So where's the leadership to offset this reckless disregard?

Certainly not from the anti-regulatory, pro-coal Trump White House, where the response to human-induced climate change has been either denial or passive acceptance of the inevitable. In July, the Trump administration reversed modest, Obama-era restrictions on coal-ash basins, effectively prolonging their existence.

And after Florence flooded hog-waste cesspools, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue offered hog wash about hog waste, saying that steps to prevent such disasters in the future are "worth discussing."

Worth discussing?

Residents in hurricane-prone states deserve better than collective shrugging and excuse-making about acts of God. They deserve leadership to protect their health and well-being.

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