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The country's largest electric company was ordered Monday to excavate coal ash from all of its North Carolina power plant sites, slashing the risk of toxic chemicals leaking into water supplies but potentially adding billions of dollars to the costs consumers pay. Duke Energy Corp. must remove the residue left after decades of burning coal to produce electricity, North Carolina's environmental agency said. (4/1)

The decision was a blow to Duke, which had originally agreed to remove coal ash from 22 of its 31 basins in the state and move it to lined landfills. The company proposed capping nine of its basins that it viewed as structurally sound and posing little threat to groundwater. Coal ash is a byproduct from coal-fired power plants, which scrub potential air pollutants from their emissions. That ash can contain arsenic, selenium, lead and mercury. Duke said Monday’s order would add decades and more than $4 billion to the original $5.6 billion estimate for cleanup at its plants. Duke is in the process of gradually retiring its coal plants. Some of the coal-ash basins are at plants that have already closed. (Bauerlein, 4/1)

A Northern California jury ordered Chevron Corp. to pay the families of two brothers who died of cancer a combined $21.4 million after concluding the company failed to properly warn the men about the dangers of a toxic solvent they worked with at a company-owned tire factory. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Contra Costa County jury’s verdict Friday came after three days of deliberations and four weeks of trial. (4/1)

Women who were exposed to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in mostly rural areas of seven southeastern Louisiana parishes continued to experience symptoms of trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder three to four years after the accident at levels greater than the national average, according to a study led by researchers with Louisiana State University School of Public Health in New Orleans. The study found that 12.7 percent of women in the study scored at or above symptom levels associated with PTSD, compared to previous studies estimating nationwide prevalence rates of only 3.1 percent for men and 5.3 percent for women. (Schleifstein, 4/1)