Collapse poses risk of toxic ash
By Anne Paine and Colby Sledge • THE TENNESSEAN • December 23, 2008
HARRIMAN, Tenn. — Millions of cubic yards of ashy sludge broke through a dike at TVA’s Kingston coal-fired plant Monday, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation and putting environmentalists on edge about toxic chemicals that may be seeping into the ground and flowing downriver.
One neighboring family said the disaster was no surprise because they have watched the 1960s-era ash pond’s mini-blowouts off and on for years.
About 2.6 million cubic yards of slurry — enough to fill 798 Olympic-size swimming pools — rolled out of the pond Monday, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
[There are 200 gallons per cubic yard so this is about 500 million gallon - Dave]
Cleanup will take at least several weeks, or, in a worst-case scenario, years.
The ash slide, which began just before 1 a.m., covered as many as 400 acres as deep as 6 feet. The wave of ash and mud toppled power lines, covered Swan Pond Road and ruptured a gas line. It damaged 12 homes, and one person had to be rescued, though no one was seriously hurt.
Much remains to be determined, including why this happened, said Tom Kilgore, president and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
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Coal is burned to produce electricity at the Kingston Fossil Plant, notable for its tall towers seen along Interstate 40 near the Harriman exit in Roane County.
Water is added to the ash, which is the consistency of face powder, for pumping it to the pond. The ash is settled out in that pond before the sludge is moved to other, drier ponds, Kilgore said.
Coal ash can carry toxic substances that include mercury, arsenic and lead, according to a federal study. The amount of poisons in TVA’s ashy wastes that could irritate skin, trigger allergies and even cause cancer or neurological problems could not be determined Monday, officials said.
Viewed from above, the scene looked like the aftermath of a tsunami, with swirls of dirtied water stretching for hundreds of acres on the land, and muddied water in the Emory River.
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“We’ll be sampling for metals in the ground to see what kind of impact that had,” said Laura Niles, a spokeswoman for the EPA in Atlanta.
This from RiverLink:
Friends,
There was a huge and terrible environmental disaster in Tennessee yesterday.
The Tennessee Valley Authority, better known as TVA, has a coal-burning power plant located near Harriman, Tennessee, along Interstate 40 between Knoxville and Nashville. The stuff that is left over after TVA burns their coal is called coal ash.
Coal ash contains mercury and dangerous heavy metals like lead and arsenic - materials found naturally in coal are concentrated in the ash.
TVA has a huge mountain of this coal waste material stored in a gigantic pile next to their Harriman (Kingston) power plant, alongside a tributary of the Tennessee River.
On Monday morning Dec. 22 around 1:00 am, the earthen retaining wall around this mountain of coal ash failed and approximately 500 million gallons of nasty black coal ash flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River - the water supply for Chattanooga TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.
This Tennessee TVA spill is over 40 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, if local news accounts are correct.
*** This is a huge environmental disaster of epic proportions.
There is better aerial footage but you have to watch an Applebees commercial first - go to the link below, then scroll down to the “Most Popular” section and find the button that says “aerial footage”
Nearly 22 million tons of coal ash have spilled into tributaries of the Tennessee River and onto hundreds of surrounding acres. A retention wall for a coal ash storage pond failed early Monday morning, sending the toxic sludge into the community around the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil coal-fired power plant near Knoxville. Coal ash is the waste leftover from burning coal for fuel. And Attorney and coal ash expert Lisa Evans of the law firm Earth Justice says there’s a human health risk now.
“This is an extremely dangerous proposition because this material can contain all these heavy metals, and it not only can present a direct contact threat, it, as I understand it, has also gone into a river that supplies drinking water to communities,” says Evans.
Evans says drinking water facilities test for metals, but some are harder to detect. In a statement on its Web site, the TVA says it will continue to sample water downstream to monitor for any harmful effects. The Authority also says it is putting up several residents whose homes were flooded, one having been knocked off its foundation.
Massive Toxic Sludge Spill Goops Up Eastern TN
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