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Former VP Al Gore Visits Goldsboro As Part Eco-Justice Tour

Valerie Crowder

Former Vice President Al Gore heard the concerns of Goldsboro residents who live near four coal ash pits, as part of a two-day ecological justice tour that began at Rev. William Barber’s church on Sunday.

“I’m primarily here in North Carolina to listen and to learn,” Gore told the congregation at Greenleaf Christian Church during an environmental justice-themed Sunday morning service.  

Five years ago, Barber created Moral Mondays, a series of social justice demonstrations that began in North Carolina and gained traction nationwide.  Now, the ecological justice organizing tour, led by Barber and Gore, seeks to shine a national spotlight on environmental injustices happening in North Carolina's poor and heavily minority communities.  

“If we can take the message that began here in North Carolina and spread it across the country – the way Reverend Barber has taken the message and the medium of Moral Mondays across the country – then I think we can have a much better chance of healing our politics,” Gore told reporters following the church service, which was the first stop in the tour.

The NC Poor People’s Campaignand Repairers of the Breach helped organize the tour, which began in Goldsboro and ended on Monday with an evening service at Shiloh Baptist Church in Greensboro.

During the church service in Goldsboro, Gore brought up the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to roll back some federal coal ash monitoring regulations that were implemented in 2015.

“This coal ash is poison. Now, they want to stop monitoring it in the same way that the law used to require,” Gore shouted from the pulpit. “If they don’t want to know whether or not the poison is going into the groundwater and from the groundwater into our bodies – if they don’t want to see – then they don’t monitor.  If they don’t want to take action, they take the responsibility away from the experts and give it to some political appointee.”

During the service, two Wayne County residents spoke about air and water pollution from the H.F. Lee Power Plant in Goldsboro which burned coal for nearly six decades until Duke Energy built a natural gas station at the site about six years ago.  Four coal ash basins are also on the plant’s property, which is located along the Neuse River.

Toxins from these unlined coal ash pits have leached into the groundwater, contaminating nearby residents’ wells, said Mindy Hodgin, Rosewood community resident and member of the Down East Coal Ash Coalition. 

“A big side effect of all this seepage is that there’s people who can’t even drink their well water,” Hodgin said. 

The plant is located within a census tract in Goldsboro where an estimated 30 percent of the residents live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  In 2015, well water tests on residents living within a half-mile radius of the HF Lee plant revealed high levels of cobalt, hexavalent chromium and other pollutants, according tothe Southern Poverty Law Center.

“They’re sending out letters telling these people, telling them to not even take showers out of the waters coming out of their wells because they’ve got hexavalent chromium and boron and manganese and all these things that are naturally occurring, but not in the levels that we have them here,” said Hodgin, who lives about two miles away from the plant. Hodgin says she and her family haven’t experienced any health problems living near the plant.      

Duke Energy has denied that its coal ash pits are leaking harmful chemicals into the groundwater. A study from Duke Energy finds hexavalent chromium isn't leaking into nearby residents' wells from coal ash pits, instead it's naturally occuring. Still, the company reports it has provided residents living within a half-mile radius of the plant alternative water sources, including bottled water and access to water treatment services.  

Duke Energy is seeking a State Department of Air Quality permit to re-burn the coal as at its Goldsboro site, as part of a recycling process that would turn it into materials used in concrete. Hogdin says she and other residents spoke out against the permit at a public hearing at Wayne Community College last month.

“I don’t think we’ve heard anything back on that,” Hogdin said. “But based on history and experience, they’ll get their permit, and they’ll be able to re-burn this ash into a community that they’ve already been polluting for years, Progress Energy polluted for years and CPNL polluted for years. And we need some state legislators to stand up for this community.”

Part of the tour’s aim was to mobilize voters to support candidates who would pass tougher environmental regulations on companies that pollute, said Rev. William Barber.

“We’re not against corporations. What we’re saying is people are first. And corporations can go to solar. Corporations can do the things that are good for the environment,” Barber said. “Are you going to choose greed or are you going to choose a future? That’s really the question – greed now, no future later. Or choose future now, and still have a blessed economy and a blessed future later. That’s really the choice – the moral choice.”

This story has been updated to include a link to a study from Duke University that finds no connection between hexavalent chromium in residents' well water and Duke Energy's coal ash pits. 

Valerie Crowder was a reporter for Public Radio East.