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Catastrophic failure here at the dan river, these plants, all 14 plants in north carolina are under lawsuit for contaminating groundwater. and that s what the public doesn t see. is that this groundwater contamination goes on every single day and while this is new news to your viewers this is not new news to the folks that are advocates trying to address this coal ash pollution that the state is facing. you were involved on the regulatory side of this for nine years before you resigned last year, citing your changed work experience under the mccrory administration. can you tell us what changed, what had your job been like, what had the regulatory job been like in north carolina before governor mccrory, and how has it changed since him? certainly. before it has always been the mission of diener to protect the resources and the public and the public s right to have clean air, clean water, a swimmable, ....
Recreationable, fishable resources in the state. when pat mccrory took office, the first thing he did was he appointed john scovarla, and john scovarla was instrumental in redefining who diener s customer was. the customer to me has always been north carolina s resources and its citizens. and he redefined that and said no, from here forward our customer is going to be the regulatory agent or the regulatory industry or the industries that we regulate. so we shifted fromma way from protecting the resource and the people from pollution to protecting the polluter and trying to help them protect both their profit and help them meet compliance standards through proper excuse me. through through the way they had to manage their waste and other ....
Prudent action that i have seen diener take since the litigation against these utilities has started. i think this is a progressive step forward that is typically unusual of diener. could this leak at the dan river plant have been prevented? was it was this the sort of thing that was foreseen, that people were worried about with those lawsuits they were filing? yes. this was absolutely 100% preventable, rachel. what we know is that these coal ash ponds, anytime they re storing toix coal ash in an unlined hole in the ground adjacent to our surface waters, that there s a risk to the public. there s a risk to our drinking water, the public s right for swimmable, drinkable, fishable water to utilize for their recreation and for their personal benefit. and even though this spill is the outward sign, we saw the outward sign of the spill in kingston, tennessee in 2008, and this is the outward sign of a ....