Dominion Virginia Power’s decades-old coal ash ponds in Chesapeake have been polluting the Elizabeth River with arsenic, a federal judge said Friday.
But U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr., who is presiding over a lawsuit alleging the utility violated the Clean Water Act, said he’d be reluctant to order the utility to spend between $200 million and $600 million to excavate the ash and haul it to a modern lined landfill.
“It seems to me that the evidence produced by the plaintiffs shows there’s arsenic in the groundwater, and the groundwater goes into the river,” Gibney said.
