For the last 10 years, Fenwick Island, Del., resident Harry Haon has been very active in local environmental efforts.
“This is an area that I think needs attention, and I feel like I can help somebody,” he said.
Haon, who is a member of numerous environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Center for the Inland Bays (CIB), has been lobbying for environmental policy change.
“I’ve been working with the Center for the Inland Bays on several projects. The NRG power plant in Millsboro, which is right on western end of the Indian River, is a coal-burning plant,” explained Haon. “They take all the ash from burning the coal and have been doing it for many, many years – decades – and they take that ash and they dump it on the ground near the plant.”
Haon said it’s the content of the ash that poses a problem.
“The concern is that ash is filled with toxic heavy metals, notably arsenic. That mound of coal ash will either leach in the ground into the Indian River or there’ll be a storm where the tide water will get up to that mound and absorb a lot of the coal ash and will get dumped into the Indian River.
“So we’ll have poisonous water that you can’t swim in and fish can’t live in... So that’s the problem and it’s been a longstanding problem.”
The old coal ash pile on Burton’s Island was found to have some erosion back in 2005, but the voluntary clean-up plan that NRG participated in concerning that pile concluded that it posed “no significant risk” in water or offshore sediment and no material exposure risk for the island’s interior.
A newer landfill is now lined.
NRG has taken other steps to protect people from the ash piles – including legally restricting access to the site and working with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Controls (DNREC) on land-use controls, such as prohibiting development and human habitation on Burton’s Island.
After a DNREC employee found in 2005 that the shoreline around the Burton’s Island ash pile was eroding, NRG began a shoreline stabilization project using rip-rap, as well as the voluntary clean-up. NRG spokesperson Dave Gaier said the shoreline stabilization project has a goal of protecting against wave and tidal action and “completely held up” during Hurricane Irene.
Haon said that the CIB and its members have been trying to make the public more aware of the problems with coal ash, and, in doing so, put pressure on DNREC and state politicians to get NRG to fix it.
Despite NRG’s cooperation with government officials on the voluntary clean-up plan, Haon has criticisms for the company.
“That’s something long-term, and it could be a disaster. We don’t think that NRG and their predecessors have done enough to try to cure that problem.”
Haon said that he has been working with the CIB on the plant’s coal-ash issue for the last three years, and as with many environmental causes, reform takes time.
“All these environmental problems you would hope you could get solved in a few months, but that’s not the case. It takes a lot of effort for a long time, even years. And you make a little bit of progress. If you’re determined, if you think it’s a serious problem and you are willing to work on something for quite some time, it can be done. The coal-ash problem is just one example of something that takes a lot of time, but it’s very necessary.”
In his work with the Sierra Club of Southern Delaware, which has among its missions “to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment,” Haon – who serves as its vice-chairman – has been actively fighting against the proposed Wanendale wastewater treatment plant near Rehoboth Bay.
“It’s in an area where there is no Sussex County public facility, and there probably won’t be. So a private contractor has been backing developers to build a sewage treatment center in that area. The problem is that it creates stuff that gets into the bays – specifically, high degrees of nitrogen and high degrees of phosphorous. And those two things have a very negative effect on the quality of the water in the bay.”
Haon said that the fight against the proposed plant has been going on for more than two years, and the club plans to continue it as long as necessary.
“The Sierra Club has been very active, saying that this sewer plant needs to be looked at in a very special way. If you don’t do it now, and it’s 20 years from now and that plant is known to be putting dirty ingredients into the water, what can you do? You spend tens of millions of dollars to fix it.”
At a meeting of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC) for the Center for the Inland Bays, DNREC Secretary Colin O’Mara defended his approval of the Coastal Zone Act permit for the Wanendale Regional Wastewater Treatment and Disposal Facility, but he did so with a caveat, saying he would be “standing with some of you” if he was not himself in the government.
Members of CAC, including Haon, asked specifically about the project and why it got a Coastal Zone Act permit through DNREC.
O’Mara reiterated his feelings about the permit, which are on record, saying that he felt the same number of dwellings would be built, regardless of the type of wastewater treatment plan, and he had to make his decision on permitting accordingly.
“A lot of issues went into that, but at the end of the day, I had to ask whether I thought it would be built or not,” he explained, “and did I have the regulatory authority to stop them from being built.”
He said the alternative was thousands of individual septic systems in the already sensitive coastal zone.
Haon also said he believes that the Sussex County government can do more for the area bays.
“I think that, over the years, Sussex County – unlike New Castle and Kent County – really hasn’t done the work that’s needed to make the environment clean for us, clean for our children and clean for our grandchildren.
“We talk about this area as being about the beach. Well, it is about the beach. But it’s also about the bays. There are a lot of people that live on the bays, go boating on the bays – go boating, fishing and crabbing, all sorts of activities.
“The inland bays of Delaware were designated 20 years ago as one of the country’s dirtiest bays and that hasn’t changed. It’s still one of the country’s dirtiest bays. So it’s a very significant problem that needs to be worked on.”
Haon said that if any citizen feels compelled to actively try to improve the local environment, they may join one of the many private organizations in the area.
“There are a lot of private groups that take an interest. And, by becoming involved, by joining, then you learn a lot about the problems and what some of the solutions might be. You’ll have a good time meeting people who share the same point of view,” he said.
“My experience is that once people hear about some of the problems that exist and their potential impact today and tomorrow, many of them step forward and say, ‘Well, I can do something about that,’ and, typically, their first step is to join one of these groups.”
Although he is a retired mechanical engineer, Haon said that a technical background is not necessary to play an active role in influencing change.
“I had a scientific education, but I didn’t have anything in water chemistry or sewer. But, you know, a lot of this stuff isn’t all that complicated. As they say, it’s not rocket science. For any of the projects that come up, anybody who has an interest can understand the technical aspects of it. We still rely on experts, from the University of Delaware, for instance, and the Environmental Protection Agency and the federal government provide detailed kinds of technical information and support.”
Haon said that he did not become active in environmental efforts until the Fenwick Island-area development Bayside was proposed.
“When it was being proposed, it was called Americana Bayside, and they wanted to build out in, near, the Little Assawoman Bay a new housing development. The size of the housing was going to be 4,000 homes; in effect, they wanted to build a little city.
“They were doing it an area that couldn’t absorb it. There weren’t sewers, there weren’t roads, there weren’t schools to support this. I don’t know how, but I got involved in what should be done about this. And my basic idea was that it should be a lot smaller. And it was made a lot smaller.”
Nowadays, Haon said he keeps up-to-date on various issues by actively following DNREC’s permitting processes.
“Many of these projects have to get approval from DNREC before they can proceed. And that approval process, in almost all cases, involves public hearings.”
Haon said he believes that everyone can find a way to contribute to the improvement of the environment.
“Everybody has in their life a great many possibilities of what to do. You can work, raise a family. You can decide to be a sports person, and so on. Working on good deeds, such as environment... Many times [people] just plain aren’t aware of the problems that exist and how they impact themselves and their families. But when they do become aware, you know, they feel like this is something that ought to be improved,” he emphasized.
“Find out about something in your area, where you live, start to try to talk to people and try to get information, read newspaper articles, and just generally get better informed.”
