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Duke’s president and chief executive officer, Lynn Good, told state officials last week the firm was studying ways to move ash ponds at Riverbend and Asheville away from the lakes and rivers they border and to bury the waste in lined landfills rather than the unlined pits currently used. The company also has agreed to accelerate its effort to close the Sutton ponds down.

Duke has coal ash dumps at 14 power plants in North Carolina, all of which were cited last year for polluting groundwater.

Coal ash is the by-product of burning coal for industrial power generation and contains concentrated amounts of toxic metals such as arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, as well as aluminum, barium, boron, and chlorine and varying amounts of radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium.

The toxins have been linked to cancer, heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, birth defects, impaired bone growth in children and behavioural problems, according to waste assessments done by the EPA.