Two neighboring towns. Two mystery cancer clusters.

Two neighboring towns dealing with unusually high rates of rare cancers are desperately searching for answers.

Huntersville and Mooresville, both northern suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina, are dealing with cases of Ocular melanoma and thyroid cancer, respectively, well above the average.

So far, doctors, researchers, politicians, and environmental have not be able to pinpoint a cause.

Mooresville Mayor Miles Atkins has a hypothesis: the 17 million tons of coal ash sitting in an unlined basin in the adjacent power plant, Duke Energy’s Marshall Steam Station along Lake Norman.

"The natural instinct would be the correlation between, well we have all this coal ash, it can be toxic, and then does it have some correlation to this cancer?" Atkins said. "It’s like, well what else can it be?"

Duke Energy spokesperson Paige Sheehan agreed to sit down with WCNC NBC Charlotte Defender Savannah Levins for this documentary.

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