Duke Energy Faces Criminal Charges And It Probably Won’t Matter

by Shawn Drury

Around this time last year an old storage plant in North Carolina began leaking coal ash into the Dan River. By the time the leak was discovered, 39,000 tons of the stuff — mercury, arsenic and lead — was flowing freely into the river. And 27,000 more tons of contaminated water also leaked into the river.

The disaster prompted a closer a look at Duke Energy’s safety practices and the company was hit with five more environmental citations. Think Progress reported a North Carolina judge forced Duke to stop groundwater contamination at its fourteen coal-fired plants in the Tar Heel State.

It’s not as if the Dan River spill came as a surprise. Environmental groups had unsuccessfully sued Duke for years to get the company to halt its coal ash practices. All told, Duke has more than 60 plants, 16 of which are coal-fired and that doesn’t include storage facilities.

Now it might have helped if North Carolina had a governor willing to stand up to the company that had just polluted the one of his state’s most precious natural resources. One glitch: North Carolina’s governor is Pat McCrory and before he became a politician, McCrory worked for over 20 years at Duke Energy.

After the spill went public, McCrory sold his Duke stock, which he had failed to disclose on his ethics form.

Last week, federal prosecutors filed criminal charges Duke for violations of the Clean Air Act.

Now, it’s not like anyone from Duke is going to jail. They aren’t. Duke didn’t even challenge the case, they admitted wrongdoing and paid a fine.

Despite the best efforts of energy companies, spills, explosions and accidents involving carbon-based fuels keep happening over and over again.

But in 2015, some politicians, including those running for president, think that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should be closed. Not scaled back, but closed entirely. Slamming the EPA for its “job-killing regulations” is guaranteed to get applause at a Republican rally. But it does nothing to clean up the Dan River.

If you criticize a persistent polluter like Duke, you’re called anti-business or someone who hates capitalism. And that’s a falsehood.

Those who hate the EPA so much, ought to go down to the Dan River and imagine it as your main water source. It seems like the only time people realize the importance of something is when they have to deal with it in real terms.

About the fine Duke has to pay, it’s just over $100 million. $100 million sounds like a lot of money.

Yet Duke’s stock price has gone up 11 percent since the spill. And its market capitalization (that’s how much Duke stock is owned by shareholders) is $56.3 billion. Pay $100 million but you’re worth $56 billion? For those of you who are bad at math like me, it’s like you have a hundred dollars and someone fined you about 18 cents.

In its most recent financial statement, Duke reported $5.56 billion in revenue. In other words, the fine just won’t matter much to Duke.