MONCURE — Duke Energy has unveiled a new coal ash recycling plant in Moncure, the third of such facilities around the state to open within the past few months.
The Cape Fear Plant notified the state last week that it was officially operational. It will join similar recycling centers in Salisbury and Goldsboro in processing a combined 1.2 million tons of coal ash per year until the facilities have exhausted coal ash deposits from nearby basins.
Each location operates according to the “STAR process,” a series of steps which “change the chemical composition of the ash so that it’s suitable for use in concrete-based construction materials,” according to Duke Energy’s website.
Over the next several years, a total of up to 5.7 million tons of coal ash in the Cape Fear depository will be excavated and processed at the new plant. After excavation, the ash will be dried and filtered before it is finally transported to concrete manufacturers within about a 250-mile radius.
The plant’s opening marks a pivotal shift in Duke Energy’s waste management practices. For decades, the company deposited much of its coal ash — a byproduct of coal-based energy production — in coal ash basins located around the state.
Last January, however, the company agreed to permanently close its remaining nine basins in a settlement with state regulators and environmental groups. Operations at the Cape Fear basin stopped in August following a closure plan Duke Energy and the Department of Environmental Quality created which the state called “protective of public health and the environment.”
“And one thing that the settlement called for was recycling as much as possible,” said Duke Energy Senior Communications consultant Bill Norton.
The facility has been years in the making, Norton said, in keeping with Duke Energy’s commitment to sustainable energy.
“We’re really pushing forward toward net zero emissions from our power facilities,” he said.
So far, the company is on track to meet that goal by 2050.
“The beauty of recycling is it permanently removes it from the environment,” Norton said. “After it goes through this reprocessing facility it is brought to concrete manufacturers and they encapsulate it into concrete, so it’s fully bound into that product. It’s out of the environment entirely.”
But some locals are wary of Duke Energy’s apparent shift toward environmental friendliness.
Therese Vick, N.C. Sustainable Economic Development Coordinator for the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL), suggests the recycling facility has substituted one form of pollution for another. Her organization has worked extensively to combat coal ash depositing in Chatham and neighboring counties, recently settling a years-long dispute with a Kentucky-based coal ash management company that planned to dump 12 million tons of coal ash in Brickhaven, southeast of Moncure. That company, Charah Industries, had originally been contracted by Duke Energy to manage its coal waste.
“BREDL does not support transferring the risks and health impacts of coal ash disposal from one community to another or trading one failed practice for an alternative method that is equally or more dangerous,” Vick wrote in a letter of protest to the DEQ at the project’s commencement in 2019. “Re-burning coal ash in what is essentially an incinerator is not protective of public health or the environment — exchanging water contamination for air emissions is a false choice.”
According to Norton, however, the ash reprocessing operations have 93% lower nitrogen oxide emissions and 99% lower sulfur dioxide emissions compared to the retired coal plant.
"Unlike an incinerator, which burns waste to be discarded, nothing is discarded in the STAR process," he said. "The finished product is an ideal ingredient for ready mixed concrete, and for every ton of coal ash recycled into concrete, about one ton of greenhouse gas emissions is avoided."
While Duke Energy representatives contend the new plant will do little to negatively impact its surroundings, Vick argues that Moncure residents have reason to be suspicious.
“The Moncure community has been impacted by coal burning, leaking coal ash impoundments, the forced siting of a commercial coal ash landfill and problems with other industries,” she said in her letter to DEQ. “They do not trust Duke Energy to be ‘good neighbors’. The STAR facility is another coal ash injustice being visited upon nearby residents.”
Now, more than a year since her petitions went unheeded, Vick and her associates are dismayed and disappointed.
“The Moncure community deserves better, they have endured decades of air pollution from the old Cape Fear plant and pollution from the leaking impoundments, and were forced to take millions of tons of Duke Energy’s coal ash from Wilmington and Charlotte,” Vick told the News + Record. “The North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Quality issued permits for a coal ash incinerator there, exchanging groundwater contamination for air pollution, and transferring Duke Energy’s liability all over the country with every single cement block made with coal ash.”
Reporter D. Lars Dolder can be reached at dldolder@chathamnr.com and on Twitter @dldolder.