Tennessee's Toxic Nightmare: Arsenic Levels 35 to 300 Times EPA Standard for Drinking Water
Just-released independent water sampling data from the Tennessee coal ash disaster has shown alarmingly high levels of arsenic and seven other heavy metals, including cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and thallium.
"I've never seen levels this high," said Dr. Shea Tuberty, Assistant Professor of Biology at the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Lab at Appalachian State University. "These levels would knock out fish reproduction ... the ecosystems around Kingston and Harriman are going to be in trouble ... maybe for generations."
"Although these results are preliminary, we want to release them because of the public health concern and because we believe the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] and EPA aren't being candid," said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chair of the Waterkeeper Alliance.
Arsenic levels were especially worrisome. "From the water samples you gave us, we had anywhere from 35 to 300 times that [EPA] level" of 10 parts per billion for drinking water, said Tuberty to Upper Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby, who floated a kayak around the "ashbergs" on Decmber 27, five days after the disaster.
After testing for presence of 17 elements that are regulated by the EPA for drinking water, the Appalachian State University team of Tuberty and Dr. Carol Baybak found that the three water samples and one sediment sample provided by volunteers from the Waterkeeper Alliance and Appalachian Voices showed that "eight of them popped out as significantly higher than they should have been for drinking water."
The test data can be found here.
Meanwhile, the TVA continues to stall and delay releasing their water sampling data. TVA, which continues to refer to the disaster as a mere "ash slide," states that "information regarding air quality and water quality has already been published." Clicking the link provided by TVA for "water sample data" directs readers to data that was taken at the city of Kingston Water intake on Dec 22 and 23, the day of the disaster, and before the material started to migrate downstream. TVA does not provide any updated water sampling data on their website.
Chris Irwin, attorney for United Mountain Defense (UMD), a Knoxville-based non-profit that has been at the site since the day of the disaster writes on Jan 2:
"As I type TVA is trying to conduct their press conference - but they are having a small problem: volunteers from United Mountain Defense have handed out the latest [water] test results to all of the press there and are refusing to stop. I just got off the phone with one of our volunteers. He said at first TVA threatened to arrest him if he did not leave. He said he would not--and all the cameras turned on him."
"Gil Francis--TVA's Public relations guy apparently nearly had a heart attack. If UMD can get this data, why can't TVA?"
While some authorities are proposing dredging to remove the ash from the bottom of the Emory River, "dredging will be a nightmare," said Waterkeeper volunteer John Wathen of Alabama. "Constantly stirring the material will cause continuous turbidity issues. Turbidity, or fine clays is where the toxins are contained. Dredging will keep this material waterborne and in transmittable form to be dealt with for miles."
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I pray for the day when corps such as these are tried for crimes against humanity.
After the confluence with the Clinch, the Tennessee loops down into AL and then flows north to discharge into the Ohio River at Paducah, KY, about 600 miles downstream. The Ohio flows into the Mississippi.
The creepy thing about the TVA system is that the same water flows through a series of dams. I think at least 7 are downstream from the Clinch. Any heavy metals that wash out of the Clinch drainage will stick around in the system for a long time because the water has to pass through all those large lakes.
surprisingly nothings been done, I would have thought that Tenn. voting republican, unlike democratic New Orleans, Bush would done something. Wrong again
Well, we all saw what happened when 'deregulation' in the banking arena finally kicked in. Now, we get to see what happens when 'deregulation' of the mining arena kicks in. This is just another example of blind greed and 'business interests before human interests' that has been wrought by the Bush Administration and their enablers in Congress. When are we going to say "Enough"!?
I watched a movie called "Koyaanisqatsi" last night, and believe me, there is a lot more to come! Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi word, meaning "Life out of Balance, crazy life, life in turmoil, life disintegrating, or a state of life that calls for another way of living".
I highly recommend watching this movie. There is no dialogue, just music and video. It is a real eye opener. A tone poem.
1. This spill is 100X the size of the crude oil spill from the Exxon Valdez (~10.3 million gallons). Moreover, toxic heavy metals, water soluble salts mostly, have been concentrated by the combustion process by a factor of almost 10 times that found in coal where it is relatively insoluble. The UND Coal Ash research Project website states that 1 billion tons of coal will yield approximately 130 million tons of coal ash - about what we burn and produce each year in US. Other notables include:
2. Exxon Valdez, Prince William Sound AK, 1989, 10.8 million gallons of crude oil, Exxon Mobil agreed to pay 75% of the $507.5 million damages in 2008.
3. Love Canal, Niagara Falls NY, mid-late '70's, 21,000 tons (~7 million gallons) of buried organic toxic waste discovered, high incidence of chronic disease, cancers and birth defects, 800 families relocated, Occidental Petroleum fined $129 million in 1995.
4. Hinkley, CA, starting in 1965, 370 million gallons of chromium 6, a heavy metal toxin dumped into the groundwater system, more than 600 people affected with numerous chronic diseases, cancer and birth defects, relocated and their homes destroyed as part of the clean up. $333 million in settlement and PG&E required to remediate the contamination. This is one of the famous cases for which Erin Brockovich is known.
I live in Asheville NC, 154 miles from this disaster, and i am disgusted by the EPA and the TVA's attempt to cover up how massive and disturbing this is. This spill is over 48 times the size of the exxon valdez disaster- it could take years to fix and most likely will be declared a superfund site that will never be inhabitable again. All the way over here- we are gettting air pollution so bad from this spill that there have been days when everyone has all had headaches, bloody noses, allergy symptoms,even seizures & nausea from going outside! We have smelled it in the air it's so strong, like exhaust, roach spray and burned poison! Who is going to compensate the people not only by the spill, but as far out as 154 miles, where we sit stuck in the house? We need air quality testing in the entire TN & Smokey Mountain area here NOW.
The fact that TVA is even trying to convince anyone they could stay anywhere NEAR this spill is a joke - if it's blowing all the way to North Carolina, my stomach turns to see those children in the picture above standing by the sludge without any protective gear on. The TVA and EPA must be entirely run by pocketed money and completely full of greed and insanity - no child should be allowed anywhere near that stuff.
What will happen when the slugde dries out and the arsenic, lead, barium, mercury
I have been tremendously frustrated by the lack of coverage on this story. When I heard this happened, I switched all over to see if the news was covering this. The only people that did were Rachel Maddow and Democracy Now... even liberal radio has been silent for the most part.
The ash from this coal is not only laden with heavy metals, it is radioactive! Coal contains both uranium and thorium, which are both radioactive elements. "They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels." So there's that, and it's permeating the water and soil of that area, and being carried downstream to other states.
Thank you Bush... Again, for creating an environmental disaster.
PART 2. My stepdaughter (who works at KFP) says they're nearing completion on a temp dam across the Emory R to contain at least some of the gross sediments as they dredge, and the plant is going to be shut down (going cold, btw, will kill some of the pollution monitoring equipment in the stacks, so it will have to be replaced, at substantial cost, before the 9 units are fired up again). At least this happened on the Emory and not on the Clinch R (with which the Emory confluences 1-2 miles downstream from spill) -- the Clinch has received decades of radioactive contamination from the various Oak Ridge National Lab nuclear weapons operations as well as insane amounts of PCBs, mercury, and organic solvents. My info is not up to date, but last I heard in the early 90s, the sediments below 85 feet were absolutely off limits to dredging because they have sequestered much of that old released material. So at least the fly ash dredging won't add insult to injury by disturbing the ORNL contamination. I guess that's a relative bright spot.
Being Candid if Government Officials are engaging in either sloppy science in order to minimize concern and thereby endangering public safety ... this goes beyond negligence and enters into malice born of greed and pandering politics.
Indictments of TVA Officials for this criminal conduct should be investigated and prosecuted. My hopes is the new administration will have no patience for the sycophants endangering the public and prosecute them as they deserve.
We should be a nation that is tired of those that would put money and politics before lives.
I'm sure those of the TVA will take offense and claim comments like mine are out of line, but regardless of any judgement in the courts ... in the hearts and minds of those of us suffering from their evil cowardice ... we know there is a special place in hell for them, and if necessary some of us will stay at the gates eternally to make sure such as their ilk never get out. Let them live in poisness ash and brimstone they would have others live in.
As they would consign and condemn other so should they be condemned.
For those few that have souls or conscience let them know what they do now ... will be with them eternally.
This stuff will leach out far beyond these areas. The TVA is just like much of corporate organizations around the world, being negligent and refusing to take the steps it should for safety.
However, the parents of the children so near this stuff need to have their backsides kicked really hard. I would see that my family and my children were as far away from that stuff as possible.
Would you take your family to a homeless shelter? Do they have homeless shelters in rural areas? Maybe FEMA has some trailers set up a safe distance away...
Yeah cause those FEMA trailers are safer????? DURRRRRR, I'm Amerikan!!!!
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/15/nation/na-trailers15
A little more detail- It looks like Chem 101 accounts for the toxic water:
Probably the contaminants are in stable forms such as their carbonates when they are present in trace amounts in coal. The contaminants are metals or semi-metallic --- Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Copper, Lead, Mercury, Nickel, Selenium. Thallium, Zinc
Heating them in oxidizing conditions (a furnace) pops them out of their stable compounds and you end up with the metal oxides. Most of the metal oxides are reactive and either react with water or form a salt that dissolves in water.
Water leaches through tons of that fly ash goop and and emerges as a toxic soup that is much more concentrated than the original ash.
The TVA site at http://www.tva.gov/ states that the original ash in the storage cell was well below the hazard level for various contaminants.
They say that total arsenic levels are only slightly above the normal level in soil.
Maybe they are telling the truth and the levels were not very high in the stored ash. Why are we finding such high levels in water samples? My guess is that the high heat of the furnace has converted contaminants into more soluble forms. If so, then fly ash is really dangerous because all those heavy metals, etc., can easily leach out and make groundwater undrinkable for hundreds of years. This is bad for rivers too. The leach water from the spill can be much higher in toxins than the original spill.
Don't worry. Bush's EPA will issue a "midnight regulation" that makes it all legal somehow.
The "regulation" has already been issued !
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008812300330
"A federal appeals court ruling last week reinstating Bush administration clean air rules undermines North Carolina's lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the utility said in court papers.
The lawsuit, which Cooper filed in 2006, claims pollution from the utility's plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky drifts into North Carolina and harms the health of people living here while degrading the environment.
The suit seeks to force TVA to make reductions of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot similar to those required of utilities in North Carolina by the Clean Smokestacks Act.
…
An expert for the TVA testified that the utility's emissions in North Carolina are “almost imperceptible..." '
And HOW MUCH WILL THIS ULTIMATELY COST?
Coal really isn't the "cheap" or "clean" energy source the industry claims it is when factoring in all data.
And how will they be held accountable? A big fine? Why does it seem people and companies who do the most damage to the most people don't pay the consequences to match their actions? Once something horrific does happen, often it seems hushed up or marginalized.
Dare I mention that fly ash also contains radioactive uranium!
Go ahead, dare to dare, but as you can see no one gives a rat's a$$ because it has nothing to do with their pocketbooks.
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