Cost Avoidance Estimates If Coal Ash Ponds Are Not Excavated and Transported to Lined Landfill

There are five coal ash ponds that Duke Energy is required to excavate and place the coal ash into landfills meeting the appropriate requirement.  Two of the five sites, H.F. Lee and Buck Power Station, have been chosen to be  beneficial reuse projects to recycle the coal ash in the ponds for use in concrete.

Since we do not have proprietary information on tipping fees and disposal costs, we are taking the high and low ranges for these costs in the south and multiplying them by the coal ash tons stored at the two locations.

A coal ash beneficiation project built in 2010 in Maryland had a cost of around $50,000,000.  Similar facilities built in South Carolina had a slightly higher cost.  The Lee and Buck plants will each produce 300,000 tons of coal ash a year.  The current average market price of quality coal ash per ton is $40 which computes into $12,000,000 annually per unit to pay for the operations and help defray the cost to utility rate payers.  Duke by choosing beneficial reuse at these two sites lowered the cost to the utility ratepayers for coal ash clean up.

Connie Wilson, CRMCA Lobbyist, 919-274-0557