Tens of Thousands of Tons of Coal Ash Spilling Into N.C. River

Up to 82,000 tons of coal ash and 27 million gallons of polluted water have poured into North Carolina's Dan River after a pipe burst beneath a coal ash pond owned by Duke Energy.

"The Dan River is very gray and ashy looking, incredibly dark," Amy Adams of Appalachian Voices told Common Dreams as she stood at the river. "It looks like if you had mixed your run-of-the-mill campfire ash in a five-gallon bucket of water."