how did the tennessee coal ash spill happen

[48] On December 26, 2008, TDEC stated that it was satisfied with the water quality in the wake of the spill but that it would continue to examine and deal with the potential for chronic health effects. The 2008 Kingston coal ash spill was a catalyst for coal ash disposal regulation. [18], TVA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initially estimated that the spill released 1.7 million cubic yards (1.3 million m) of sludge, which is gray in color. [65] In January 2017, the EPA announced that the ecosystems impacted by the spill had returned to conditions prior to the spill. "Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System; Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals From Electric Utilities." [64] This ruling was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit after evidence was discovered that Jacobs Engineering had misled the workers about the dangers of coal ash. McCarthy has undergone three heart surgeries since 2012 and is plagued by breathing problems and chest pains. But the accident at Dan River wasn't the first time a coal ash pond collapsed. B: The Kingston Fossil Plant taken on December 22, 2008 after the spill. Tom Bock, the top Jacobs safety officer on-site, claimed that many of the accusations about the cleanup effort and safety of the workers were false or contained misinformation. [3], The next day, TVA spokesman Gil Francis Jr. stated that, at the time of the spill, the area contained about 2.6 million cubic yards (2.2 millionm) of ash, and that two-thirds of that had been released,[22] which would later be found to cover an area of 300 acres (1.2km2). Jamie Satterfield Knoxville 0:04 2:10 An analysis by a consortium of environmental groups shows unsafe levels of toxins, including arsenic and lithium, in groundwater test wells near the. App Brian Thacker looks out of his home in Clinton, Tennessee. NRDC works to safeguard the earthits people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. ", Neither TVA officials nor Jacobs Engineering would comment on the ongoing litigation, although in court Jacobs denied any wrongdoing. Why birds are building fortresses from anti-bird spikes, How shark meat became a global phenomenon. She also blamed the electric power and coal industries for ineffective safeguards, citing other similar cases, and stated the issue of proper disposal of coal ash is not an extremely complicated problem, and that utilities know how to solve it. The reason is unclear, but workers theorize he didnt want the public to think the site was unsafe. Why do orcas go through it? That same day, about 150 of the workers who actually cleaned up the spill gathered at the site, which is now a park with hiking trails, boat ramp, and ball fields. The groups contend that coal ash has already polluted 23 states and that the proposed new rule would only allow more pollution and more risks to human health and the environment. Thanks for signing up. Existing ash ponds and landfills must comply with structural and location restrictions, where applicable, or close. 5 years after coal-ash spill, little has changed - USA TODAY In 2016 his colon ruptured, sending him into the ICU for 19 days, where he almost died. The final phase of the cleanup consisted of assessments on the health and environmental effects of leaving this ash in the waterways. Content is available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. "[75] The ruling ultimately found that TVA did not build the holding ponds according to the initial plan and failed to train its employees on how to properly inspect the dikes surrounding the ash ponds, leading ultimately to a failure to maintain the facility to prevent a rupture of the dikes. Michael McCarthy had a new job, a baby at home, and another on the way. The ruling held that Jacobs Engineering had failed to keep the workers safe from environmental hazards, and had misled them about the dangers of coal ash, mainly by claiming that extra protective equipment, such as masks and protective clothing, was unnecessary. That you can eat it and drink it and it wont hurt you, says McCarthy before entering into a fit of coughing, one of several such interruptions during our short telephone call. The motive, she says, was to reassure the public that coal ash wasnt a threat. Inside the Tennessee Coal Ash Spill - Newsweek [80] In 2018, the EPA dismissed a complaint by the residents of Uniontown that charged that the landfill was in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Safety guy told us we'd get fired for even asking for one.". More than 200 cleanup workers and family members are now suing TVA's main contractor, Jacobs Engineering, for refusing to provide them with protective equipment and for causing their debilitating and in some cases deadly diseases. The coal ash rule, created after the Tennessee Valley Authority's 2008 Kingston coal ash spill, was the first federal regulation of coal ash disposal.The current rule does not apply to landfills . As coal ash lawsuit drags on after 10 years, dozens of exposed workers have died. [10] The New York Times noted that the amount spilled was larger than the amount stated to have been in the pond before the spill, a discrepancy the TVA was unable to explain. What is coal ash? How is coal ash disposed of? Here's what experts say 85, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, United States House Committee on Natural Resources, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Environmental impact of the coal industry, "TVA coal ash spill: 5 things to know on 10-year anniversary", "A Lawyer, 40 Dead Americans, and a Billion Gallons of Coal Sludge", "Coal's other dark side: Toxic ash that can poison water, destroy life and toxify people", "TVA to auction 62 parcels in Kingston after ash spill cleanup completed", "TVA Found Liable for Massive Coal Ash Spill But Proof of Damages Remains an Obstacle", "On 10th anniversary of Kingston coal ash spill, workers who went 'through hell and back' honored", The Kingston Steam Plant: A Report on the Planning, Design, Construction, Costs, and First Power Operations, "Site of the Spill, and How Fly Ash Is Produced", "Early warnings on ash pond leaks; TVA, state inspections show repairs, suspension of deposits at Kingston ash pond", "TVA working to repair damage to area after pond breach", "Historic Disaster: 10 years after the ash spill", "Ash spill: Two prior breaches at retention site", "Water Supplies Tested After Tennessee Spill", "Tenn. Sludge Spill Challenges 'Clean Coal' Future", "Ash spill: TVA triples amount of sludge released", "Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate", "TVA looks to similar case for costs of removing fly ash", "EPA's Response to the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant Fly Ash Release", "Tennessee Dam Bursts, Hundreds Of Acres Flooded With Toxic Slurry Of Ash", "Nation's Largest Public Utility to Test Water After Coal Ash Spill", "TVA ash storage pond breach covers 400 acres in Roane County", "Tennessee sludge spill estimate grows to 1 billion gallons", "Resource Loss and Psychosocial Stress in the Aftermath of the 2008 Tennessee Valley Authority Coal Ash Spill", "Tennessee sludge spill runs over homes, water", "Ash Release at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant", "Environmentalists Concerned On Effects Of Huge TVA Coal Ash Spill", "Tenn. Coal Ash Spill Devastates Recovering River", "The Lasting Damage of the Tennessee Coal Ash Spill", "Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards", "Report: Four factors led to fly ash spill", "Group: Stronger warnings needed in Tenn. ash spill", "EPA found high arsenic levels day after ash spill", "Bredesen visits site of retention pond spill", "Erin Brockovich hopes to help residents near coal sludge spill", "Metal Levels Found High in Tributary After Spill", "Tennessee: Corps to dredge river around Kingston plant", "TVA to spread seed and straw at Kingston spill site", "Environmentalists Detained for Photographing Tennessee Ash Spill", "Cleanup begins in wake of Tennessee ash pond flood", "At Plant in Coal Ash Spill, Toxic Deposits by the Ton", "Obama's EPA Pick Would Address Coal Ash Issue", "Rahall introduces bill to police coal-ash impoundments", "Tennessee Valley Authority's coal ash conundrum continues as lawsuits, cleanup issues loom", "Coal plant operators shirking responsibilities on ash cleanup, report contend", "D.C. Jimmy needs a nebulizer, a machine that delivers medication in a fine mist, to open his lungs and help him breathe, sometimes weekly, sometimes daily, depending on his activity level. And levels of Beryllium were 160 times higher than acceptable EPA levels. "They told us it wouldn't hurt us," he says. The managers at Jacobs werent the only ones downplaying the dangers of coal ash. [62], The EPA first estimated that the spill would take four to six weeks to clean up; however, Chandra Taylor, the staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, said the cleanup could take months and possibly years. He needed to get up, the voice told him, and he needed to get up right. Thacker developed a multitude of medical issues after working on the Kingston cleanup. [73] Also on December 30, 2008, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy announced its intention to sue the TVA under the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) and RCRA. McCarthys home was not one of them, but he was part of the crew handling the cleanup, an effort that lasted years. Birth control pills: What you should and shouldnt worry about. The TVA paid Jacobs Engineering $64 million to clean it up. Frankie Norris displays the burning sores he still has and began getting soon after he started working on the cleanup a decade ago. "TVA has given my husband a death sentence," says Janie Clark, whose husband Ansol Clark built the cross for the memorial this past December. [55] This was completed by 2022 at a cost of $2 billion. Most bore blisters from the arsenic buried in their skin. Robert D. Bullard, a champion for the victims of environmental racism, claimed that the EPA's response was a prioritization of the health of Caucasian Americans over the health of African Americans. He suffers from chronic cough and shortness of breath. There are more than 20 toxins in Kingston's coal ash. So I know we were doing all the right things.". [64] The cleanup was accomplished under guidelines set by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). Watts Bar Dam, located along the Tennessee 38 miles (61km) downstream from the mouth of the Clinch, impounds a reservoir (Watts Bar Lake) that spans a 72-mile (116km) stretch of the Tennessee (to Fort Loudoun Dam), the lower 23 miles (37km) of the Clinch (to Melton Hill Dam), and the lower 12 miles (19km) of the Emory. This page is not available in other languages. Communities to Coal Plants: Clean Up Your Mess Before You Go! - NRDC How has Texas changed in 20 years? He says he was fired for asking for a dust mask. A federal jury in Knoxville ruled in early November that Jacobs Engineering had endangered the health of its workers. [31], The spill was reported to have killed and buried multiple deer and at least one dog, and ejected fish from the Emory River onto the river bank as far as 40 feet (12m) from the shore. Coal ash is a dirty dark secret that has gone on in this state and this country way too long. Survivors who gathered at the site on the tenth anniversary of the spill laid flowers on the cross. By Kelly Hearn June. The coal-fired power plant, located across the Clinch River from the city of Kingston, used a series of ponds to store and dewater the fly ash, a byproduct of coal combustion. [15] However, TVA continued to make small repairs instead of switch to dry storage systems in an effort to reduce costs. The Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill was an environmental and industrial disaster that occurred on Monday December 22, 2008, when a dike ruptured at a coal ash pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing 1.1billion US gallons (4.2million cubic metres) of coal fly ash slurry. [29][47], In response to independent attempts at sampling of the water quality and the taking of photos, the TVA illegally detained, for approximately one hour, two members of the Knoxville-based environmental organization United Mountain Defense who were traversing public land in the area of the spill and warned three other individuals that any attempt to enter the public waterway would lead to prosecution. Until all the ash ponds and landfills are cleaned upand we stop burning coalthe risk to U.S. drinking water supplies remains. It happened to another company six years ago in Kingston, Tennessee. Standing Stone Circles of Northwest Arabia, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. [15] TVA officials were also confirmed to have been aware of the toxicity of coal ash as early as 1981. [76], Some critics of the EPA's response claim that the choice of how to deal with the spilled coal ash was an act of environmental racism. [21] On January 1, 2009, the first independent test results, conducted at the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry laboratories at Appalachian State University, showed significantly elevated levels of toxic metals, including arsenic, copper, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, nickel, and thallium in samples of slurry and river water. "It's not just one toxin," says Avner Vengosh, a geochemist at Duke University who studied both the Kingston and Dan River spills. Which one of these spiders is a black widow? But I had a wife and three girls and I needed to provide for them. Tennessee Spill: The Exxon Valdez Of Coal Ash? : NPR "After Jacobs took over [the cleanup] at three months, they started telling us everything was safe," says Clark, who is now 67. On that December night, the dike surrounding the mound collapsed, unleashing a tsunami that coated 300 acres of gorgeous countryside and waterways with 1 billion gallons of gray sludge. The industry-generated data were released last March: They revealed groundwater contamination at 95 percent of the tested sites. The spill released a slurry of fly ash and water, which traveled across the Emory River and its Swan Pond embayment, onto the opposite shore, covering up to 300 acres (1.2km2) of the surrounding land. Some of the survivors walked with canes. All rights reserved, a dike ruptured at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant, numerous respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. The time-critical phase removed 90% of the ash located in the Emory River. Lord yes," says Norris. CONTACTS: Sequatchie Valley Institute, svionline.org; Tennessee Valley Authority, tva.gov. When you sign up, youll become a member of NRDCs Activist Network. Ansol Clark was one of the first to arrive at the site on December 22, 2008. Tommy Johnson, Kingston coal ash cleanup worker, dies - USA TODAY The sludge gushed out like a tidal wave, destroying three homes. [19][21], The spill covered surrounding land with up to six feet (1.8 m) of sludge. When a dike on a coal ash pond ruptured at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Kingston, Tennessee, in December 2008, it spilled far more toxic ash than the Deepwater Horizon spilled oil. The 5.4 million cubic yards of sludge that broke through a 57-foot earthen dike at Kingston was the largest industrial spill in the nation's historynearly ten times the size of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill two years later in the Gulf of Mexico. In his home in Powell, Tennessee, Doug Bledsoe, who suffers from both brain and lung cancer, holds a bag of his medications. TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill - SourceWatch Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. New ponds and landfills must include a geomembrane liner over a layer of compacted soil. The ash is a mix of clays, quartz, and other minerals, forged into tiny glass-like beads by the heat of the fire. "In your backyard you may have 20 to 50 parts per million (ppm) of arsenic depending on where you live," says John Kammeyer, TVA's vice-president for civil projects, who was in charge of engineering for the cleanup. "And we worked in a blue haze for months. Distrust in the TVA runs deep in eastern Tennessee, and as the utility shutters two power plantsBull Run and. 80, EPA. Here are a few types of coal ash, according to the Environmental Protection Agency : Fly ash: This powdery ash is . The doctors told him he had arrhythmia, that his heart wasn't getting enough oxygen. June 29, 2009 Issue Tennessee Spill: Regulation Hazards The recent coal ash spill in Tennessee reveals the toxic fallacy that states should regulate industrial waste. [35] In response to a video that showed dead fish on the Clinch River, which had received runoff from the spill, TVA spokesman Gil Francis Jr. stated "in terms of toxicity, until an analysis comes in, you can't call it toxic." The Complete Story of the Kingston Coal-Ash Spill - Men's Journal The Knoxville News Sentinel described the pan as the size of a cats litter box., We were told constantly throughout the years that it was safe. More than 900 people worked on the site between 2008 and 2015, operating the giant dredges, track-hoes, bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment to remove the ash from the river, dry it in windrows, and ship it in rail cars to a lined landfill near Uniontown, Alabama. And neither TVA nor the EPA told workers about the independent tests done by Tetra Tech, Wake Forest University, and Duke University, which all found dangerous levels of arsenic and radium at the spill site. The big attacks come at night when were sleeping, says McCarthy. An attorney for Jacobs Engineering also claimed that the company had not been found liable for the illnesses contracted by the workers. As coal ash lawsuit drags on after 10 years, dozens of - CBS News
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