Mooresville plans to buy and clean up a longtime toxic coal ash site along busy N.C. 150 just east of Interstate 77 exit 36, Mayor Chris Carney said Wednesday night.
“The Town is taking a leadership position on this critical issue,” Carney said in a statement after a closed meeting of the Mooresville Board of Commissioners.
Town officials called the special meeting to discuss resolving “the long-standing problem” of coal ash at the former Tire Masters site at 190 West Plaza Drive (N.C. 150 East), Carney said.
The town is negotiating with the property owners to buy the site “as a necessary first step to clean up the site,” according to the statement.
That will enable the town to apply for state and federal assistance, Carney said.
Mooresville also has hired “a third-party, independent group” to test a stream at the site, according to Carney’s statement. “That testing is currently underway,” he said.
The stream eventually flows into Lake Norman, The Charlotte Observer reported in 2020, when a 20-foot-deep sinkhole emerged at the site during heavy rains.
Lake Norman supplies the town’s drinking water, Carney said, and the town routinely monitors the water for contaminants.
Town officials will hold a news conference at 3 p.m. Thursday at Town Hall to discuss their plans for the coal ash site in more detail.
In 2020, North Carolina environmental officials investigated the release of sediment containing coal ash from the sinkhole, the Observer reported at the time.
The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality had known about the sinkhole and had been monitoring it since July 2019, according to a department news release in 2020 announcing that the sinkhole reappeared.
The sinkhole re-emerged in a parking lot outside of the tire and auto-repair shop.
“The parking lot is built on a documented coal ash structural fill,” officials said in the 2020 release, adding that the property owner previously repaired it in 2018 and 2019.
The sinkhole reopened in September 2020 after the collapse of a stream culvert pipe under the fill, the department said. The pipe collapsed during heavy rains, officials said.
“DEQ will hold the responsible parties accountable for any violations that may have occurred and continue oversight of the remediation at the site,” according to the 2020 department news release..
Thursday morning, DEQ spokeswoman Laura Oleniacz told the Observer she was checking to see if anyone was ever cited in the case and whether the department still has a role in monitoring the site.
The site also is near where construction will start next year on the $269 million widening of a 15-mile stretch of N.C. 150 in the Lake Norman area.
This is a developing story.