Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Recent rain has created a puddle of muddy water at the coal ash site in Narrows.

NARROWS -- Danny Melvin was playing pool in Blacksburg on Sunday night when he got the call. Riverview Campground was flooding. There was a smell like diesel fuel in the air.

Melvin, who helps his brother-in-law take care of the campground, jumped in his truck and headed back to Narrows. He called Giles County's emergency dispatchers and told them what was going on. The Narrows Fire Department had already been called out.

Riverview Campground is on the edge of Narrows, between U.S. 460 and the New River, next to Cumberland Park. Cumberland Park is about 13 acres of New River riverbank where coal ash -- about three years' worth of ash from Appalachian Power Co.'s Glen Lyn power plant -- is being used to raise more than 7 acres about 30 feet. That will put the riverbank level with U.S. 460.

The site's owner, the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, says that will create a building site for a job-creating business. But the Concerned Citizens of Giles County point out that coal ash contains arsenic, lead and other toxins. The group argues that piling the ash in the New River's 100-year flood plain threatens the health of the river, residents and the tourism industry.

Appalachian and the Giles County Partnership for Excellence have argued that the pit being filled with ash is protected from the river by an earthen berm about a foot and a half above the 100-year flood plain. It is held in place with steel supports and vegetation.

The ash will be 6 feet above the water table -- about three times more than state regulations require, according to the project's engineers. The layer of soil covering the ash will be thicker than regulations require. Monitoring wells will alert Headwaters, the company overseeing the project, if something does seep out. There's a sediment pond and more than a mile of silt fencing protecting the river from runoff.

Sunday night, water knocked down a section of the silt fence as it rushed into the campground. It was more than 2 feet deep in places.

Trucks have been dumping ash at the site since May, but the drainage system meant to carry runoff from the highway away from the site isn't finished yet. The section nearest the campground was scheduled to be completed during the later stages of the three-year project, according to Joe Ryder, environmental compliance officer at the Glen Lyn plant. He said it will be done more quickly now.

Ryder said none of the ash left the site during Sunday's gully washer. He didn't know where the diesel smell came from.

Aziz Farahmand, who works in the Virginia Department of Environmental Water Quality's Roanoke office, said he had a message from Appalachian that the fuel came from a nearby service station.

"If there was diesel in that water, then it went to the river," Melvin said. "Because our drain goes on down to the river."

There used to be two drains leading to the river. Melvin helped put them in after the campground flooded in 2001. There's been no problem since then, Melvin said, but the pipe that made up the second drain sits in a pile on the Cumberland Park site.

And it turns out the engineers were wrong about the water table. At the eastern end of the project, water began seeping into the site. The ash that had been placed at that end of the site was moved, replaced by rock, a liner and a layer of clay. That is supposed to separate the ash that will eventually be placed there from the seepage.