Massive Coal Sludge Spill Devastates Tennessee Town

Treehugger:

An environmental disaster of epic proportions just happened in Tennessee. Monday night 2.6 million cubic yards (the equivalent of 525.2 million gallons, 48 times more than the Exxon Valdez spill by volume) of coal ash sludge broke through a dike of a 40-acre holding pond at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant covering 400 acres up to six feet deep, damaging 12 homes and wrecking a train.

According to the EPA the cleanup will take at least several weeks, but could take years. Officials also said that the magnitude of this spill is such that the entire area could be declared a federal superfund site.

Read the whole story: Treehugger

Comments

[icmountainpeaks]

Their had been reports of leaks small blow outs and a wet spot on the dam. Marry Christmas
Say a prayer for all those who just lost their homes to the Kingston mining Say a prayer for those who are spending this Christmas worrying about their health. To the mother who is preparing a babies bottle with tap water and hasn’t heard of the disaster yet. To the child reaching for a glass of water. For all those who are in the winds path when the sludge dries and turns to dust. “It is ok to drink the water for a few days because Although video from the scene shows dead fish on the banks of the tributary, he said that "in terms of toxicity, until an analysis comes in, you can't call it toxic." Interview from Cnn. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/tennessee.sludge.spill/index.html . Pray for all those victims, and those that don’t know they will become a victim. You can see an aerial view of the damage here.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/lets-go-clean-coal-yeah-baby-more-kingston-mine-gifts-to-the-people-and-environment

[1differentdrummer]

Just another tiny Johnstown.

[karinova]

Oh my God.
*squeezes back tears of impotent rage*

What part of "if it keeps on raining, levee's going to break" is so hard to understand?

[Anciano]

Following Rep Corker's adamant lead....No federal money wasted on this. The locals can pay for the cleanup or can just truck in bottled water for the next five hundred years.

[Anciano]

This is the same kind of mess that shale "oil" leaves behind. Billions of gallons of water required to process the ground up rock. We need to stabilize and slowly reduce our population and energy usage now. This is not the 19th Century, we must stop all immigration into the country as well.

[AlaninElkGrove]

An interesting interview on this disaster is available today, through iTunes, on "Democracy Now" with Amy Goodman...

[watchingthings]

Nobody at the environment protection place could have possibly foreseen this happening. They were much too busy doing their own personal work when they should have been watching out for these things or they just had no clue what it was that their job was about.

[Danny]

Why is this not top of the front page on HuffPo?

[sixx]

This appears to be a free market event, and should be opened to no bid contractors from Katrina.

[ErikW65]

The scale of the spill is amazingly horrible. They're saying there's no way to clean it up because there is simply no place to put that much sludge. It has to stay right where it is; the coal waste has created it's own disposal site.

Merry Christmas from the Coal Industry, for a "gift that keeps on giving"...

[TrooAmerican]

Clean Coal.
Lets eat some.
Everybody Road Trip to Tennessee, and make sure Sen Corker knows if you support domestic companies over foreign ones.

[bby328]

According to the EPA the cleanup will take at least several weeks,
but could take years. . . "Shucks, we may never know."

[stlrfan]

Don't worry Tenn., I'm sure yor hero Corker will bring in some non-union labor to clean this up for you, by the way go ahead and laugh your ass off Detroit.

[totaldisbelief]

There go the real estate values.

[Paralogos]

This accident was probably more than 8 years in the making, but we've just had 8 years of government by a group of people with an obsession with making the public sector fail. Perhaps with the new Sentate coming in, someone will want to investigate the extent to which the TVA was "sabotaged" with crony administrators and diversion of resources.

[TrooAmerican]

yes. 8 years of people who lessened safety regulations, and policies that protect consumers from corporate disasters from mine safety, to leveling mountains and burying streams, to inspections of energy companies and their waste facilities.
Lookin the other way for higher profits and less accountability.

[Paralogos]

Google the TVA. This isn't a corporate disaster, this is a public works disaster.

[Danny]

Yes, Paralogos-- the same thought crossed my mind.