Last night I was driving home, and noticed that Laurel Fork (along Hwy 105, just outside of Boone) was running a grayish color. I tracked down the source of the gray water, and it turned out to be the discharge from the Vulcan Boone Quarry (Just south of Boone on 105). Here is a video and some pictures of what I found.
Gray-Brown Plume in Laurel Fork, created by Vulcan Boone Quarry
Discharge Pipe
The Vulcan Boone Quarry has had repeated problems in the past with discharging milky white and gray water and they got in trouble for it before. As a result they have some fancy monitoring equipment to watch their discharge. The question remains, why is this still going on if they have they monitor this water, and if they have gotten in trouble for this before?
Monitoring Equipment and Pollution
Check back for updates on what Vulcan and the North Carolina Division of Water Quality are going to do about this.
In September, 2010 I traveled back to Harriman, Tennessee to meet the Blue Planet Expedition crew and our research partners at the Tennessee Aquarium Conservation Institute to tell the story of the TVA coal ash spill disaster two and half years after it happened. We spent a long day on the Emory River electroshocking fish and conducting interviews in the shadow of the Kingston coal fired power plant. The Expedition Blue Planet crew also traveled to the Savannah River Site D area in South Carolina to capture the impact of coal ash on amphibians. The film uses the TVA coal ash disaster as a lens through which to see the true cost of dirty coal on water, communities and our planet. Here is the remarkable and outstanding short film that resulted:
Great job Alexandra Cousteau, Ian Kellett, Anne Casselman, Ali Sanderson, Christoph Schwaiger, Michael Duff, Jonnie Morris, Oscar Durand, Sean Solowiej and the whole rest of the Blue Planet Expedition crew. This is the best film yet on the Kingston coal ash spill disaster.
The Appalachian Voices Watekeeper team began its journey into the dark abyss of coal ash and its toxic impact to waterways in December of 2008 when it started documenting the environmental harm caused by the TVA coal ash pond spill into the Emory River at Harriman, Tennessee. Since that time, the App Voices Waterkeeper team has released numerous reports, videos and calls to action to protect waterways from the contamination of coal ash:
The hard work and relentless advocacy of our organization and our partners to ensure clean water and healthy fisheries is yielding results. Recently, NC announced it was requiring Duke Energy and Progress Energy to implement additional monitoring of heavy metals at is coal ash ponds in NC. The news was covered on WFAE and the Institute for Southern Studies: “North Carolina orders utilities to test groundwater near coal ash ponds.”
We could not do this work without the generous support of our members, they make it possible for us to continue the all out assault on Dirty Coal’s contamination of water! Look for some exciting new information from us on Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2010)! In the meantime, here are some of our coal ash videos from last year:
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