Hazardous waste like coal ash is pervasive.
North Carolina alone has over 2,500 active hazardous waste sites and more than 2,000 inactive sites with lingering contamination.
Various types of waste can be considered hazardous, including medical waste, laundry byproducts, pool chemicals and coal ash.
Not all hazardous waste sites pose the same risks. Every site has specific contaminants and environmental factors that uniquely affect its risk to the environment and surrounding community.
Here are three things that make the hazardous waste at the site at the Chapel Hill Police Department particularly dangerous:
- Toxic compounds in coal ash pose human health risks.
Coal ash contains dangerous contaminants like mercury, arsenic and lead. In the short term, exposure can lead to skin and respiratory irritation. In the long term, exposure can lead to more serious illnesses like cancer, according to a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
In 2022, a team of experts from Duke University and Appalachian State University tested samples from the CHPD and found that they “exceed the ecological threshold values for aquatic freshwater sediment toxicity.”
This slew of “toxic and carcinogenic constituents” is what prompts public health concerns about coal ash exposure, said Dr. Zhen Wang, an environmental geochemist who helped conduct this analysis.
Recent EPA studies have also “found that both the radiation and arsenic in coal ash is much more dangerous than was previously understood,” said Nick Torrey, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.
- Toxic metals leach into creeks and waterways as coal ash sits longer.
When coal ash settles at the bottom of bodies of water, like the Bolin Creek Trail, it can lodge itself into the tiny empty pockets between sediment particles called pore space.
Coal ash does not lose toxicity as it begins to break down; when exposed to water or new chemical environments, it can break down and release dangerous metals.
“It isn’t like coal ash gets better with time without anything being done,” said Dr. Ellen Cowan, professor of geological and biological sciences at Appalachian State University.
For Tom Henkel, an 88-year-old who first got involved in helping the town make decisions about coal ash at CHPD in 2013, the threats posed by the coal ash at CHPD are especially salient because they’re sitting at the bottom of a body of water.
“The problem is, what about the bottom? They can’t do anything about the bottom,” Henkel said.
Henkel stayed involved in this process until earlier this year when his term as chair of the Town of Chapel Hill’s Environmental Stewardship Advisory Board expired.
- Contaminants run downhill, onto public trails and into waterways.
The coal ash at the Chapel Hill Police Department is situated in an unlined pit above the Bolin Creek Trail. As time goes on, rain, wind and other environmental factors can spread the coal ash downhill, increasing coal ash-related health risks to the local community.
Because of this topography, Torrey advocates for Chapel Hill to take stronger and more decisive action than simply covering up the coal ash, which the town is considering per the draft Brownfields Agreement.
“This is a steep slope. It’s eroding,” he said. “You have coalesced as a whole host of very specific, extremely hazardous pollution associated with it. You know, it’s right above the creek. It’s above people. So this is, like, the worst possible place to try to use that approach.”
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