A First Hand Account of the TVA Coal Ash Disaster in Kingston, TN

This is a monumental and unprecedented environmental catastrophe. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) disaster is now estimated at 5.3 million cubic yards of coal ash, or almost twice as large as the 2.8 million cubic yards generated by the World Trade Center collapse.

The most comprehensive aerial video of the spill is here:

This spill is affecting two tributaries of the Tennessee River. The Tennessee is a major river system and a drinking water source for millions of people downstream in Chattanooga, plus Alabama, west Tennessee and Kentucky. Coal ash is the waste material captured after the coal is burned for electricity - burning coal generates about half of America's electricity and according to Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Jeff Goodell, there is three times as much coal ash as municipal solid waste generated in America every year. ( "Big Coal," Jeff Goodell page 123). About 130 million tons of coal ash and power plant scrubber sludge are generated annually.

Coal ash contains heavy metals like mercury, arsenic, and lead. An article in Scientific American magazine dated Dec 13, 2007 states that coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste.

In response to an urgent request from environmental activists, I brought water testing equipment to members of United Mountain Defense working at the spill site. UMD has set up an emergency crisis management center in Kingston, TN to coordinate the citizen response to the disaster and handle the media onslaught. On Saturday Dec 27, a flotilla of citizen water testers in kayaks, including members of UMD and Waterkeeper Alliance, toured the spill site, navigating among huge chunks of coal ash, which they refer to as "ashbergs." "We named the highest peak Mt. Ash," said Matt Landon, UMD volunteer staff person.

TVA - which refers to the disaster as an "ash slide" on their website www.tva.gov - is telling the public not to worry, the water is safe, the coal ash is inert. The TVA website says "The public may call [phone]" - but no one answers that phone and it will not accept messages because the mailbox is full (Monday morning 9:27 AM EST).

The Knoxville News Sentinel (Monday, Dec 29) states "the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported that "very high" levels of arsenic were found in a water sample collected from the affected area and that several heavy metals have also been found in quantities "slightly above drinking water standards." (ref: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/dec/29/tva-not-holding-its-head-high/ )

Officials with TVA and EPA have already lost some credibility with the local residents.

On Dec 23, the day after the spill, the Tennessean first reported that the size of the spill was 2.6 million cubic yards. The following day TVA said that the entire intact mountain of coal ash mountain was actually 2.6 million cubic yards, and that about two-thirds (or roughly 1.8 million cubic yards) had broken through the earthen embankment. Now TVA is saying that 5.3 million cubic yards of their coal ash mountain collapsed into the water. There are 200 gallons in a cubic yard, so that equates to about 1.06 billion gallons -- almost 100 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill of 11 million gallons in 1989.

We tried to drive back to the spill site but TVA officials sent us to a media corral to sit and wait. We tried various tactics to get past TVA security, including offering to give a ride to some local residents walking home carrying heavy bags of groceries - but no luck. TVA made them walk back to their coal-ash-covered homes.

After 20 minutes of waiting, we left the media corral and drove around on back roads to try and access the spill scene. We found a great photo op at a roadside pulloff: a local Kingston resident had tacked a homemade cardboard sign reading "CLEAN COAL?" to a tree.

When we tried to take pictures of the sign, we were quickly accosted by an agitated TVA official wearing agreen vest, who demanded we leave immediately. We drove on to the next checkpoint, where we were detained for almost an hour. The TVA official called TVA police and demanded that we be arrested. Fortunately the local ABC News affiliate (Channel 6) was there to capture the whole scene of our detention, and we were eventually allowed to leave.

TVA personnel appear to be under great strain, which is understandable -- but in my opinion they over-reacted. All we were doing was taking photos.

I worked on the Martin County Kentucky coal slurry spill in 2000, when the accident-prone coal company Massey Energy dumped 300 million gallons of thick black coal slurry into two streams, Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek in eastern Kentucky.

In that case, the local Martin County officials kept the media out by blockading the public roads for "public safety." The story was effectively squelched and most people in America never heard how bad it was. I helped to publicize that disaster, but it occurred before the age of bloggers, independent media, and videos on line. Thanks to an army of cyber-activists, America is now well aware of what has happened at the TVA plant in Kingston.

It's hard to comprehend the enormous size of this spill. TVA's coal ash mountain was stacked over 50 feet high -- as high as a 5 story building.

If a dump truck can hold 20 cubic yards of dirt and ash, it will take 265,000 truck loads to haul away all the ash (they are taking it back to the power plant). If they fill one dump truck trip every 5 minutes and work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it will take about 2.5 years to clean up the spill. TVA has been telling the media it will be cleaned up in about 6 weeks - this is a ludicrous claim.

There is an emergency meeting of the Kingston City Council on Sunday at 4:30, open to the public. The City of Kingston will begin the process of formulating its official reaction and response to the massive TVA fly ash spill. Everyone who wishes to speak or comment will have the opportunity to speak at the public meeting.

The Kingston Community Center is located at 201 Patton Ferry Rd, Kingston, TN‎ --
phone [phone]‎.

Comments

[danawv]

This is an excellent post, thanks Dave for compiling all this information together. Thanks also to United Mountain Defense for their emergency response work and efforts to provide real information to the citizens who've been affected -- the local government issued a boil order on the water -- as if boiling water will remove the heavy metals! And counter acting this message has probably already saved many lives

Coal will never be clean, and it is definitely not cheap, unless you consider the value of human life to be nothing --

[American04]

1 in 150 children are born with Autism, 1 in 12 children have mental disorders, every 72 seconds someone in the US is diagnosis with Alzheimer's... google lead, mercury, and you find an association to these disorders/diseases the brain neurons have been damaged.

The unregulated power industry are allowed to release millions of tons of deadly toxicants into our environment annually. There has been no accountable of the health hazards they have created causing costly medical expenses and irreversible medical problems with millions of Americans every year.

I’m sure if measured the damage they cause to human health, it would be equivalent or may be great than the health hazard to people that smoke tobacco.

[seakat]

Nothing about coal is clean, nor can it be. EVER.

It starts with the mining process itself and what it does to the miners themselves and the land.

[Roket]

I couldn’t help but notice in the first video a train pulling loaded coal cars blocked by the coal sludge. Since I’m certain that TVA’s opinion is ‘what’s done is done’, the six weeks they site for clean up means that they are referring to access to the plant via rail, water or land. This is most likely what will take six weeks to clean up. Screw the rest. Having retired from a large publicly owned utility I am also aware that many power plants are in already built on top of coal fields. The problem here is that the coal they sit on top of is usually used up in pretty short order. This makes it a sweet deal until the coal runs out. I would also like to note, for the ignorant among us, that many people do not choose to live on top of coal mines, they are born there. Children do not have the luxury of picking where they are born. Using this logic, no one should be living on the west side of the San Andreas Fault. Now get busy and convince everyone in LA to move. Coal is death. You’re breathing it right now.

[mudshark12]

2.6 million cubic yards in just 6 weeks? Sounds like B.S. to me, and where is the TVA going to haul it to anyway? Somewhere it don't rain? Aw give me a break. For Our (and the Environment's) own good we really need to wean ourselves off of coal, it can NEVER be made clean. The coal companies need to consider investing in wind or nuclear power and getting out of coal.

[tatertots]

CLEAN COAL IS A MYTH! A LIE! NOT TRUE! NO SUCH THING! A FALSEHOOD! GET IT?

Good. Write your congresspeople to stop subsidizing this hideous industry.
If you knew how many of your tax dollars went to subsidize these polluters
you would not be happy.

www.KILOWATTOURS.org

[disgustedwithall]

THE ARTICLE FORGOT TO POST THE SALARY OF THE CEO AND OTHER BIG BOYS AT TVA.. They are per year, in the MILLIONS with bonus. Seems TVA and Wall St-Bankers, all share incompetence, damage to the naion and BIG WAGES and all wages justified under the "Look what other companies pay so we must pay them to assure we get the best".. and this is the best? Look up CEO TVA wages and bonus, sounds like Wall St and Banks all over again. and of course none, will be fired.. Seems the FEAMSIZINIG OF USA Continues.. .

[lcarliner]

The latest coal ash disaster adds to the urgency for President Obama to take EMERGENCY action to rescind the Bush rule changes permitting mountaintop removal miners to dump the overburden into nearby streams and valleys! It is precisely this behavior that led to the horrible Buffalo Creek, West Virginia disaster several decodes ago! If these rule changes are allowed to stay, surely, the stage for future Harriman, Tennesee, and Buffalo Creek disaster will be set!

[Bonobo]

He won't. Barack Obama does nothing in a hurry, has a strong distaste for the sort of strong-arm tactics that would be required to overcome the entrenched interests, and seems to think extreme measures are inappropriate in an economic downturn. Maybe in four or five years.

[RegDame]

EPA and TVA, like other supposedly technical agencies, have been dominated by the defiers and defilers of science prevalent in the Bush administration. Clean Coal is only one of their creative fictions. Stephen Chu will have a helluva big task awaiting him on 1/20.

[BobKincaid]

Great work as usual, Dave! Keep the heat on 'em.

I guess with CNN taking millions from the CleanCoalistas, we shouldn't expect Anderson Cooper to come swooping in anytime soon. That means it's up to folks like you to get the message out.

[Shelby Highsmith - Huffpost Blogger]

This is an environmental catastrophe in its own right, that's certain, but I have to nit-pick a detail. It's a disservice to science to propagate the ridiculous Scientific American headline that "coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste" without qualification. That was one of the most irresponsible headlines ever published by a supposedly reputable periodical and makes as much sense as saying "a 100 watt bulb generates more heat than the sun" (yeah, if you touch it, 'cause it ain't a hundred million miles away). If you'd just read the article you'd see that the author actually explains away the inflammatory headline. Coal ash is nowhere near as radioactive as the heavy elements generated in nuclear fuel rods; it's just that we're a lot better at containing the nuclear waste than the coal ash (as so clearly demonstrated in TN now) so people near coal plants get more exposure to it.

[RudyV]

But coal still contains radioactive particles, and if they don't travel up the chimney they have to be caught and buried somewhere.

[littlepitcher]

Don't tell a former Roane County resident about comparisons of this nature. The EPA consistently has lied about water quality in the county. Cancer is rampant. Nuclear wastes from Oak Ridge's atomic research facilities were stored in ordinary 55-gallon drums, some in nice wet caves, others buried in damp ground by bulldozers, and after all these years, they are rusting out and leaching their toxins into the water table. Undoubtedly, this ash skyscraper has leached as well. County residents are advised to boil water or drink it bottled. One of my cousins was fired from a regional newspaper for trying to report on nuclear waste contamination.

Two other quietly horrifying possibilities exist here--illegal dumping of other toxic wastes trucked in or brought in by rail; the second--sale and smuggling of nuclear materials to third world countries by Dixie Mafia--often anti-Semitic Klan.

The county has suffered from three trail derailments with spills of contaminants.

If my memory is correct, governmental agencies are exempt from regulation by other governmental bodies. This means the EPA does not control TVA. Many executives are drawn from media or political families to expedite coverup, and the TVA police force can surveil without accountability.

[Clavis]

Mr. Cooper, thank you so much for the education. I know one can only pack so much into a single essay, but you managed to share a lot in a very short time. I'm not surprised that the scope of this disaster has been underplayed by Bush Administration officials. Not surprised one bit...

[FogBelter]

My question is whether maintenance of this unstable toxic coal soup is factored into the "Clean Coal" equation? I believe this is an aspect of coal burning people haven't been considered as they focus on the supposed clean air aspects of the "Clean Coal" model being pushed. Back to the drawing boards for "Clean Coal" proponents, I'd say, until they explain addressing their industries toxic byproducts. Stewing in an open pit doesn't seem to cut it.

[Rule Of Law]

"the coal is burned for electricity - burning coal generates about half of America's electricity "

This explains why we aren't reading about this disaster in the corporate owned (Are you Listening GE?) MSM!

[Terribleblodge]

I've given up calling them the MSM. In truth they are the MSP - Main Stream Propaganda.

[pahpah25]

TVA AND THE COAL COMPANIES HAVE BEEN BSING ABOUT COAL FOR YEARS.....THE COAL COMPANIES RUINED MORE WATER SCOURCES THAN CAN BE COUNTED...­..........­WHAT WAS ONCE GREEN VERDANT FORESTS AND CLEAR RUNNING STREAMS ARE NOW A MEMORY....APALACHIA IS BROWN AND DEAD...........