Carolina Power & Light Company's Goldsboro Plant in Wayne County began generating electricity in 1951.

[7] Quaker Neck Lake is 4.7 miles (7.6 km) west of the city center of Goldsboro, North Carolina.

[11] Hurricane Matthew dropped 15 inches (380 mm) of rain in the area in October 2016, which caused the Neuse River to flood.

On 12 October 2016 Duke Energy announced that a break 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 m) wide had developed in the southeast corner of the cooling pond wall.

[11] The low-head Quaker Neck Dam was built in 1952 at Neuse River kilometer 225 to impound cooling water for the steam electric plant.

[15] Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior, swung a sledgehammer to symbolically start removal of the Menominee, Quaker Neck & Cherry Hospital Dams.

[17] The Cherry Hospital Dam was also removed, which restored another 76 miles (122 km) of streams for use by anadromous fish in Little River, a Neuse tributary.

[19] An active ash pond enclosed in a dyke lies opposite Quaker Neck Lake to the north of the river.

[21] A Duke Energy site assessment in 2015 reported that the basins had high levels of toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, antimony and thallium.

The company said there was no risk of significant release of material from these basins, and the active ash pond was not affected by the flooding.

[11] However, in October 2016 Waterkeeper Alliance and Sound Rivers reported a large coal ash spill from at least one of the inactive basins.

According to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, the spill was "yet another tragic example of why coal ash must be excavated from pits near waterways and stored in lined, dry impoundments away from rivers and well above the water table, as soon as possible.

[19] Originally the company had planned to move the six million tons of coal ash to a landfill in Lee County.

Duke Energy was now going to invest in technology to remove excess carbon to make the ash more suitable for concrete.