For more than 70 years, Mike Camp has never lived more than 2 miles from the Vermilion River.
Growing up on his family’s dairy and crop farms in Vermilion County in east-central Illinois, Camp spent his childhood and adult life swimming, fishing and canoeing along the meandering bends of the river’s Middle Fork.
“We’ve floated the river our whole lives,” Camp said.
He and his wife, Kristin, currently live less than a mile and a half from the river in Collison. They have spent more than a decade fighting to protect it from over 3 million cubic yards of toxic coal ash stored on the Middle Fork’s floodplain, a particularly vulnerable location along Illinois’ only national scenic river.
A few miles downstream, a coal-fired power plant operated for more than 50 years before being retired in 2011. Camp said he first became concerned when he was canoeing and saw ash deposits seeping into the river, leaving rainbow-colored sheens along the bank.
Vistra Corp. acquired Dynegy Midwest Generation, the owner of the retired plant, in 2018. Dynegy submitted a plan to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to permanently close the coal ash ponds more than four years ago.
That plan has yet to be approved. In the meantime, residents and environmentalists are worried about the company’s response as severe storms increase erosion and the threat of the river overflowing into the coal ash ponds.
Heavy rains pushed the Middle Fork to over 18 feet on Aug. 16 — the river’s third-highest level on record, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Dynegy reported earlier this month that erosion along the riverbank has reached a “trigger event,” a threshold established to prompt action before the coal ash ponds are at risk of breaching.
The company plans to install 500 feet of rock along the bank beginning after Labor Day to halt further erosion. The stabilization project is a preventative measure, not an emergency response, said Vistra’s communications manager, Jenny Lyon, in an Aug. 14 email to the Tribune.
But watching the water levels rise, the Camps worry that increasingly severe flooding could accelerate erosion before the reinforcement is built.
“One huge flood could change it overnight,” Mike Camp said.
The Vermilion River’s Middle Fork has been the subject of legal battles since 2018, when Prairie Rivers Network, an Illinois nonprofit focused on protecting the state’s waterways, and Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, sued Dynegy to clean up three coal ash ponds that, according to the environmental groups, contain enough ash to fill the Empire State Building twice over.
Dynegy reports have found that multicolored coal ash sludge along the Middle Fork contains arsenic, chromium, lead, manganese and other toxic substances.
“As long as the ash is there, this is going to hit a crisis moment or hit the pre-crisis moment like it did this time,” said Andrew Rehn, climate policy director at Prairie Rivers Network. “How many more times are we going to have to intervene before the coal ash is removed?”
‘The forever project’
In 2019, Illinois passed a coal ash pollution reduction law requiring coal ash sites across the state to submit closure plans to the IEPA by 2022. Rehn said he believes the lawsuit was the “inciting event” that spurred Illinois to regulate coal ash cleanup statewide.
Coal ash is the hazardous byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity. It creates a sludge of toxic carcinogens that are dumped into holes or ponds.
In 2023, the Illinois attorney general’s office obtained a court order requiring Dynegy to remove the coal ash from the Vermilion floodplain and relocate it to the site of the retired power plant. The plan must also be approved by the IEPA.
Vermilion is just one coal ash site among dozens across the state awaiting IEPA’s green light to begin cleaning up toxic coal ash.
Rehn said the state’s coal ash law was designed to prioritize sites based on factors including environmental justice concerns and the stability of the site. The Vermilion location, he said, should be among those receiving the most urgent attention because the river is actively eroding toward the coal ash.
“We don’t have a single closure permit that’s even made it all the way through the process yet,” Rehn said. “I’m hoping that this is the first one that gets there, which would definitely be in the spirit of the law.”
For Kristin Camp, the law’s passage was a victory for Vermilion County residents, but years later, it has yet to translate into action.
“A small group of citizens was able to get a state coal ash bill passed, which was a huge win,” she said. “But then (the Middle Fork cleanup) just got stalled. It needs to get moving and get done because otherwise if it breaches, it will be extremely, extremely disrupting. It will be catastrophic.”
Kim Biggs, an IEPA spokesperson, said the Vermilion permit application remains under review. The agency determined in February that the plan failed to meet state standards, she said, and Dynegy has since responded to the notice.
“The ash removal plan has not yet been approved because the identified technical deficiencies must be adequately addressed before the Illinois EPA can make a tentative permit determination,” Biggs said in an email to the Tribune.
Once Dynegy’s coal ash removal plan is approved, Lyon said it will take 12 years to complete.
For Rehn, Dynegy’s latest erosion report underscores the urgency of that review.
“The river is actively eroding where the coal ash is, and we need to find the solution there,” he said.
Rehn said it’s also critical to remove the ash before it contaminates the soil.
“It just seems like this should be the slam dunk one, and it’s also a site where we have a clock,” Rehn said. “We’re seeing that clock is starting to really tick.”
‘A wakeup call’
While Dynegy and environmental advocates await the IEPA’s decision, the site operator is required to submit monthly erosion monitoring reports to state agencies, Prairie Rivers Network and Earthjustice documenting the condition of the Middle Fork and its proximity to the three coal ash ponds.
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Vermilion is a free-flowing river, a natural waterway unaltered by human-made structures like dams. While this quality makes the river rare in Illinois, Rehn explained, it also makes its banks susceptible to erosion.
On Aug. 4, Dynegy disclosed that its June 30 inspection determined erosion had reached the trigger line — a threshold established in a 2023 emergency response plan designed to prompt action to reinforce the riverbank and prevent a breach.
Dynegy now plans to install 500 feet of rock along the affected section. The company says the trigger line was established well before the point of actual risk, allowing it to act before a crisis develops. The company also said the riverbank retains 1.5 times the load-bearing capacity it needs.
“There has been no release, no breach, and no change in the condition of the ash ponds,” Lyon wrote in the email to the Tribune. “The embankments continue to perform as designed, with strength and capacity to spare. This stabilization initiative is a preventative, not emergency response.”
But the Camps say the river conditions in the weeks since that June inspection have given them new cause for concern and increased the urgency for the erosion to be addressed. They fear a breach at the Vermilion site could be as devastating as the 2008 coal ash spill at Tennessee’s Kingston Fossil Plant, which released more than 1 billion gallons of toxic ash into nearby waterways and properties.
“It would be like that, or worse,” Kristin Camp said. “It needs to happen because there are going to continue to be flooding events and severe weather events and they appear to just be getting more severe, quickly.”
Flooding over the past 20 years has altered the river’s channels, Mike Camp said.
As human-caused climate change makes the Midwest warmer and wetter, heavy rainfall and flooding are becoming more frequent and intense.
Kristin Camp is also concerned about what prolonged exposure to the coal ash could mean for groundwater and drinking water. Many residents in Vermilion County, including the Camps, rely on private wells.
Concerns about the site’s stability have grown as environmental advocates question the timing of Dynegy’s disclosure of its latest erosion report.
The inspection occurred on June 30, but the company did not disclose to environmental groups that the threshold had been reached until August. Rehn said he learned of the stabilization plan on Aug. 7, more than five weeks after the inspection.
Dynegy’s July 31 report stated there were “no signs of significant erosion or cracking of the riverbank” since the June 30 inspection. Neither the June nor July reports mentioned the trigger threshold had been reached or that a bank stabilization project had been initiated.
Environmental advocates said the omission raises concerns about the transparency of the monitoring reports.
“In addition to the delays in removing the coal ash, we are troubled by the lack of transparency shown in Dynegy’s monthly erosion inspection reports,” said Lan Richart, co-director of the Eco-Justice Collaborative, in an Aug. 11 news release. The Champaign-based environmental advocacy group has worked closely with the Prairie Rivers Network on coal ash regulation in Illinois, including efforts to protect the Middle Fork of the Vermilion River.
“Why was reference to the need for bank stabilization omitted from the reports?” Richart wrote. “The public deserves — and Dynegy is obligated to provide — accurate and timely information about this project.”
Jenny Cassel, an attorney for Earthjustice, said the firm is reviewing the omission.
“The Consent Order provides for stipulated penalties for failure to comply with a variety of provisions in the Order; we continue to evaluate the appropriate follow-up in this situation,” Cassel said in a statement Friday.
Lyon said the claim that Dynegy had not been transparent is “false,” as it promptly notified the IEPA, the attorney general’s office and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources two days after assessing the conditions in late June.
Nevertheless, Rehn said he’s glad Dynegy ultimately disclosed the erosion to environmental groups and is taking steps to reinforce the riverbank.
“I would hope that this is a wake-up call,” Rehn said. “It’s a reminder that it’s not a static river. Nothing’s changed in the regulatory process, but a lot has changed for this river in four years.”
What makes the situation so difficult to manage, he explained, is rivers can erode gradually for years, then change dramatically in a single flood.
“That’s what’s tricky about river erosion: It happens steadily, and then it happens all at once,” he said.
In the email to the Tribune, Lyon said Dynegy’s immediate goal is to keep the ash stable while the permanent closure plan moves through the regulatory process.
“The solution is the permanent closure, but until then, our job is to keep the coal ash stable and secure and to protect the Middle Fork, the adjacent wildlife area, and the people who use them,” she said.
For Mike Camp, who’s spent much of his life advocating for the Middle Fork’s protection, the ‘glacial pace’ of state action is frustrating.
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In the 1980s, he was among the residents who pushed for the river to receive national scenic river status, a designation meant to preserve its natural, recreational and scenic values. The effort ultimately laid the groundwork for what are now the Kickapoo State Recreation Area and Middle Fork State Fish and Wildlife Area.
“I’m the most reluctant activist in the world,” he said. “But some things are worth fighting for.”
Christiana Freitag is a freelancer.