Duke University researchers issued a study Monday warning that tons of ash from coal-burning power plants are polluting North Carolina's drinking water with arsenic, selenium, cadmium and other toxins.

The report is part of the fallout from the December 2008 dam spill in Tennessee that focused public attention on the risks associated with storing coal ash in impoundments and retaining ponds. Environmental groups since then have been urging federal and state agencies to regulate coal ash pits as hazardous waste.

Duke researchers wrote that coal ash residues "represent one of the largest industrial waste streams in the U.S. and are not classified as hazardous waste."

"Our data clearly show high contaminant levels that suggest the need for enhanced removal/wastewater treatment," Duke researchers wrote. "The results of this study have significant implications for hundreds of similar sites across the US given that CCR [coal combustion residue] storage facilities continuously generate contaminants via leaching and transport to nearby hydrological systems."

State regulators slashed a rate request by Aqua North Carolina, the state's biggest private water utility with 88,000 water and sewer customers, including more than 400 subdivisions in Wake County.

The N.C. Utilities Commission approved a 5.3 percent increase for Aqua, representing an additional $2.3 million a year in sales for the company. The rate increase approved is a fraction of the 19 percent the company had originally asked for.

The rate increase will be the company's second in three years, and the request in January elicited hundreds of objections from customers who said they couldn't afford higher utility bills in the middle of a severe economic downturn.

The Public Staff, the state's consumer protection agency in utility rate cases, conducted a months-long audit of Aqua's books and concluded that the company was entitled to a puny rate increase of 1.2 percent.

The utilities commission decision, issue late Monday, essentially splits the difference between Aqua's position and the Public Staff's. Aqua had scaled back its 19 percent request to about 10 percent last month when company officials realized they had aroused intense passions from customers and skepticism from regulators.

I still haven't gotten back on the elliptical because my foot took longer to recover from my gout flare-up that I thought. But I still have some good news...

Residents from Wake County and outlying areas made an impassioned plea Monday evening to the N.C. Utilities Commission not to allow Aqua North Carolina to raise their water and sewer rates for the second time in three years.

About two dozen people listened more than two hours to public comments challenging the rate request by Aqua, the state's largest private water utility. Aqua charges more than $100 a month for a typical residential customer in North Carolina, about twice the monthly bill charged by Raleigh, Charlotte and other municipal water departments.

The Cary-based company, with 88,00 water and sewer customers in the state, is seeking to raise bills by 20.4 percent for water service and 16.4 percent for sewer service, which would come to about $17 a month extra for a typical residential customer.

"It has gotten to the point where we don't water our lawn, we don't wash our car," Juli Williams, an Aqua customer who lives in Mallard Crossing in Raleigh, told the utilities commission. "I personally go bananas if my 10-year-old wants to fill a water gun in the summer. That's a personal story of how we have to live because of these water bills."

Several hundred protesters are expected in downtown Raleigh this evening to object to their water and sewer bills.

The placard-carriers will be objecting a proposed rate increase by Aqua North Carolina, a private utility that serves communities without municipal water/sewer hookups.

Dozens are expected to attend a public hearing on Aqua's proposed rate hike, to be argued before the N.C. Utilities Commission in the Dobbs Building at 430 Salisbury Street. About a hundred plan to demonstrate outdoors near the commission's office, said organizer Juli Williams, an Aqua customer who lives in the Mallard Crossing community in north Raleigh.

Smithfield officials want residents to know there's no shortage of water for its utility customers.

Folks might easily get confused, given the amount of publicity surrounding Johnston County's water restrictions that went into effect Monday. Apparently, there was a TV crew that used Smithfield's water plant on North Second Street as a backdrop for their report.

That plant isn't part of the county's system, though it's been providing water to the county as they cope with the shortage.

Smithfield utilities director Earl Botkin offers an update on how Smithfield's dealing with the extra demand:

"Our production rate was well over six million gallons yesterday afternoon (we actually exceeded our permitted quantity for a short time)," Botkin wrote in an e-mail Tuesday morning. "Ray [Peal, plant manager] says that he was not able to get our tanks completely full last night, so we will monitor everything very closely. We will make every effort to help the county through their tight water situation, but if a severe capacity problem looms, we will have to ask them to cut back."

I'll admit I can't be too smug about the TV folks' mistake, since I had to look up where the county's own plant is located. Turns out, it's out by the Neuse River near Wilson's Mills.

The provost's office at Duke University has a back-to-the-future thing going on.

Provost Peter Lange, inspired by a recent discussion with musician Jackson Browne, has ordered bottled water use in his office to cease.

Instead, a return to the good old days of water coolers and paper cups. Remember those days? Ahh, nostalgia. 

_{(photo courtesy Duke University)}

Lange met Browne, a 2010 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, recently when the rocker was on campus. Lange was swayed by Browne's interest in sustainable living, deciding then to rid the Allen Building's second-floor administrative offices of bottled water.

“We had a staff meeting the Monday after their visit and I told everyone we’re going to get rid of plastic bottles and exclusively use a cooler and paper cups,” Lange said in this story from the Duke website. “There are a lot of things you know you should do but never get around to it, so I figured why not start now?”

 And they'll save some cash, as well. The bottled-water elimination is expected to save about $1,700, according to the same Duke website story.

See video from a massive fish kill on the lower Neuse River near New Bern, N.C. Video by staff photojournalist Chuck Liddy.

Among the items on tomorrow's City Council agenda is a proposal that would require new Raleigh water customers to pay a $100 deposit to get service. Raleigh currently does not require customers to put a deposit down before opening a water and sewer account.

But the city’s Public Utilities and Finance departments say the amount of people skipping out on their water bills has risen in recent years, particularly in the last few months as the economy has deteriorated.

City staff is recommending that new residential and commercial customers be required to put down a $100 deposit beginning Dec. 1. That's the date when the city will switch over to tiered-water rates for residential customers and move to monthly billing, two features made possible by new billing software. Existing customers would not be subject to the deposit ordinance unless they have a poor credit history with the city.

Between 1999 and 2008 the annual amount of bills going unpaid to the Utilities Department has increased from $543,371 to $1,226,850. The utility system’s revenues increased from $37.6 million to $89.3 million during that same period.

The city disconnects on average 1,720 accounts per month with an average bill of $100. Over the last year about $30,000 of unpaid utility bills were due to bankruptcies and about $370,000 was due to bad checks or over-drafts, according to the city. In a memo to the City Council, Chief Financial Officer Perry James and Public Utilities Director Dale Crisp said that “the current economic situation only exacerbates the ability to collect on accounts that have gone in to delinquent status.”

Most other utilities in the Triangle do require new customers to put down a deposit. OWASA and Durham charge $50. Cary charges $60 but will soon raise its deposit to $150.

Raleigh already charges new water and sewer customers a $50 new service fee, meaning residents would need $150 to get service hooked up. The city’s proposal would allow for new customers to have the deposit spread over several bills.

The City Council meets at 1 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall, 222 W. Hargett Street. At 7 p.m the council will hold a public hearing to discuss City Manager Russell Allen's budget proposal.