Rep. Zach Wamp Calls Tennessee Spill "Katrina-Like"
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats said Thursday they want stricter rules for toxic ash from coal-fired power plants following a massive spill in Tennessee that has threatened drinking water and caused health fears.
Officials from the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the plant in Kingston, Tenn., promised senators and people affected by last month's billion-gallon spill that the agency will clean up the sludge as quickly as possible and work to compensate those who have lost property.
"We'll start with the people first and the environment comes right after that," Tom Kilgore, the authority's president and chief executive, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the committee, said there is a pressing need to better manage and dispose of the ash. "The federal government has the power to regulate these wastes, and inaction has allowed this enormous volume of toxic material to go largely unregulated," she said.
Boxer, D-Calif., criticized the TVA for not spending enough money to prevent the breach. She also said her committee has not kept close enough watch over the nation's largest public power provider.
The staggering cost of the cleanup _ possibly in the hundreds of millions of dollars _ is likely to find its way into the electricity rates charged by the TVA, which has 9 million customers in seven states.
"I am sorry, I'm really sorry," Boxer said. "I assumed a lot and I shouldn't have assumed."
TVA officials have said they have not planned to ask Washington for money to help with the cleanup. But Tennessee Rep. Zach Wamp, a Republican who has announced plans to run for governor in 2010, said after a meeting with Kilgore on Thursday that members of Congress should push to include dollars in an upcoming economic aid plan or in other spending bills.
He said that because heavy rains may have contributed to the breach, it should be considered as a disaster eligible for federal emergency money.
"The federal government needs to look at this as more of a Katrina-like event," he said, referring to the 2005 hurricane that devastated New Orleans.
The dike broke Dec. 22 at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 50 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn. The breach released 1.1 billion gallons of sludge _ 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash _ from a 40-acre settlement pond. The spill blanketed several hundred acres in a rural neighborhood with up to 9 feet deep in grayish muck and carried into the Emory River, threatening drinking water. No one was hurt but three homes were destroyed and several dozen parcels of land were damaged.
Kilgore defended his company's practices and said it would not be able to fully investigate the problem until the spill is cleaned up.
Speaking of the dike, he said, "We had no reason to believe it wouldn't hold this." He added, "I don't know what caused this but I don't think it's something that betrays the public's trust in that we were careless."
He said the TVA is willing to purchase properties from the affected residents and possibly even sell them back to land owners after the cleanup.
Terry Gupton, a farmer in nearby Harriman, Tenn., whose land was partially flooded, was one of several residents who sat in the front row of the hearing. "Now that we've had hearings, he's been put on notice that he has to be accountable," Gupton said about Kilgore.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said more actions is needed on several levels. "TVA needs to do more, the state needs to do more and it may be that the federal government through the EPA needs to do more," Alexander said.
Environmental groups say the spill points out the dangers of burning coal.
The breach "is an environmental catastrophe that reveals not only the dangers of burning coal and mismanaging coal combustion waste, but also the need for federal regulation," said Steven Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Some landowners have sued and environmental groups may follow suit, arguing the TVA broke federal law by not fully disclosing the extent of spill contamination.
Several members of Congress warned that the response should not go too far.
"We should not use this tragedy as something to shut down almost all coal production in this country," said Rep. John Duncan, R-Tenn.
The TVA has resisted Environmental Protection Agency regulation previously on coal plant emissions. The EPA took the TVA to court a few years ago on grounds that improvements to TVA's 1950s-era coal plants were significant enough to require the TVA to use the latest available emissions control technology, as if the plants were new.
TVA fended off that challenge when the federal courts ruled the EPA lacked jurisdiction and said one federal agency could not tell another what to do.
___
On the Net:
TVA: http://www.tva.gov/
Loading comments…
MARY CLARE JALONICK | 01/ 8/09 03:25 PM |