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COLUMBIA Years of water pollution from SCE&G's Eastover power plant landed the company in court Thursday when environmentalists sued to require a cleanup that state regulators never forced the company to perform.
The Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation says SCE&G and the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control have struck two secret agreements to address the contamination, but neither has resulted in cleansing the site. In fact, a 2001 agreement allowed the company to continue polluting groundwater, the suit said. The 42-year-old power plant, which burns coal, dumps waste coal ash from the plant into unlined ponds that have leaked. The ash contains arsenic, a poison that has been documented in groundwater and the Wateree River.
DHEC spokesman Adam Myrick said his agency was declining comment. Power company spokesman Robert Yanity said seepage from the company's coal-ash ponds has been stopped and the utility already is working to remove ash from the waste ponds. The company plans to dig up any contaminated soil once the ash is removed.
