CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Duke Energy was in a bind. North Carolina regulators had for years allowed the nation’s largest power company to pollute the ground near its plants without penalty. But in early 2013, a coalition of environmental groups sued to force Duke to clean up nearly three dozen leaky coal-ash dumps spread across the state.
So last summer, Duke Energy turned to North Carolina lawmakers for help.
Documents and interviews collected by The Associated Press show how Duke’s lobbyists prodded Republican legislators to tuck a 330-word provision in a regulatory reform bill running nearly 60 single-spaced pages. Although the bill never mentions coal ash, the change allowed Duke to avoid any costly cleanup of contaminated groundwater leaching from its unlined dumps toward rivers, lakes and the drinking wells of nearby homeowners.
Passed overwhelmingly by the GOP-controlled legislature, the bill was signed into law by Gov. Pat McCrory, a pro-business Republican who worked at Duke for 28 years.
The level of coordination between Duke and North Carolina’s lawmakers and regulators had long been of concern to environmentalists.
But when a Duke dump ruptured Feb. 2 — spewing enough coal ash to coat 70 miles of the Dan River with toxic sludge — the issue took on new urgency.
Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the spill, issuing at least 23 grand jury subpoenas to Duke executives and state officials.
The first batch of subpoenas were issued the day after an AP story raised questions about whether North Carolina regulators had helped shield Duke from a coalition of environmental groups that wanted to sue under the U.S. Clean Water Act to force the company to clean up its coal-ash pollution.
Still, regulators alone could not protect the company from its huge liability if the environmental groups persevered in court. So Duke officials lobbied — successfully — to change state law itself.
Their vehicle was the Regulatory Reform Act. And they took aim at a provision that had been on the books for decades, requiring Duke to halt the source of contamination if its subterranean plumes of pollution crept more than 500 feet from its ash dumps.
