coal ash. and that might have been the end of it in north carolina, except for what happened along the dan river. last month on super bowl sunday, a duke energy coal ash dump in eden, north carolina, broke loose, went gushing into the dan river coating that river bottom for 70 miles with a ribbon of sludge and toxins like arsenic, it was the third largest coal ash spill in our nation s history. and the ensuing rage about that disaster, the associated press revealed what the mccrory administration had done to stop these coal ash pits from getting fixed whenever environmentalists tried to fix them. it was a really big embarrassment for governor duke energy. but now it looks like things might have changed in north carolina. this afternoon, at about 4:00 eastern time, north carolina s environmental agency posted this letter from the ceo of duke energy. the letter is addressed to the governor and north carolina s environmental secretary and it kind of says, okay, you win. we re going to c
last month on super bowl sunday, a duke energy coal ash dump in eden, north carolina, broke loose, went gushing into the dan river coating that river bottom for 70 miles with a ribbon of sludge and toxins like arsenic, it was the third largest coal ash spill in our nation s history. and the ensuing rage about that disaster, the associated press revealed what the mccrory administration had done to stop these coal ash pits from getting fixed whenever environmentalists tried to fix them. it was a really big embarrassment for governor duke energy. but now it looks like things might have changed in north carolina. this afternoon, at about 4:00 eastern time, north carolina s environmental agency posted this letter from the ceo of duke energy. the letter is addressed to the governor and north carolina s environmental secretary and it kind of says, okay, you win. we re going to clean it up. duke says in this letter they re going to start the process of moving the rest of their coal ash away
moving the rest of their coal ash away from the dan river and they say they ll speed up plans to close their ash ponds at three other sites and they say they will figure out what to do about all their other coal ash dumps across the state eventually. so that sign of change number one. but then check this out. after duke wrote that letter outlining their plan to go so much further toward cleaning this stuff up than they ve gone before, the mccrory administration responded by saying essentially, hey, that s still not far enough. the environmental secretary saying, quote, duke energy s response is in inadequate. this department is moving forward immediately with mechanisms to enforce stringent timelines for fulfillment and duke energy s obligations to protect public health and the environment. if the boss of duke energy is, in fact, saying they re going to start cleaning this up and the mccrory administration saying you ve got to do more and do it faster, might that be, maybe,
we definitely feel that duke has plenty of money in the bank to not only pay to clean up this spill but to clean up all the other toxic coal ash sites thatter threatening other communities. drew griffin was at that protest yesterday. he joins us this morning. you just broke out some news this morning. we re talking about the governor that used to work for duke energy for three decades. a lot of suspicion about him. but the governor is telling duke energy look you got all these ash ponds, 30 some ash ponds sitting next to our rivers it s time to move them, move them away from the water. that s a quote-unquote temporary environmentalists think it s a necessary position. what the protesters want yesterday to get rid of that all together because there s no safe depository for these coal ash sludge ponds that sit there and seep into the ground. there s all sorts of chemicals in this coal ash that could seep into the ground and