Tennessee sludge spill runs over homes, water

(CNN) -- A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area.

The sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley Authority's power plant in Kingston, about 40 miles east of Knoxville, agency officials said.

The retention wall breached early Monday, sending the sludge downhill and damaging 15 homes. All the residents were evacuated, and three homes were deemed uninhabitable, a TVA spokesman told CNN.

The plant sits on a tributary of the Tennessee River called the Clinch River.

"We deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston Fossil Plant failed, resulting in an ash slide and damage to nearby homes," TVA said in a statement released Tuesday.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Video footage showed sludge as high as 6 feet, burying porches and garage doors. The slide also downed nearby power lines, though the TVA said power had been restored to the area.

Francis said Environmental Protection Agency officials were on the scene and estimated the cleanup could take four to six weeks.

Some of the goop spilled into the tributary, but preliminary water quality test show that the drinking water at a nearby treatment plant meets standards.

"I don't want to drink it. I doesn't look healthy to me," Jody Miles, who fishes in the Clinch River, told CNN affiliate WBIR. "Do you reckon they can bring all this life back that's going to die from all this mess?"

Still, there is the potential for more sludge to enter the water supply through waste runoff.

"We're taking steps to stabilize runoff from this incident," Francis said.

Although video from the scene shows dead fish on the banks of the tributary, he said that "in terms of toxicity, until an analysis comes in, you can't call it toxic."

One environmental attorney called that statement "irresponsible." The ash that gives sludge its thick, pudding-like consistency in this case is known as fly ash, which results from the combustion of coal.

Fly ash contains concentrated amounts of mercury, arsenic and benzine, said Chandra Taylor, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

"These things are naturally occurring, but they concentrate in the burning process and the residual is more toxic than it starts," she told CNN.

Appalachian environmentalists compared the mess with another spill eight years ago in eastern Kentucky, where the bottom of a coal sludge impoundment owned by Massey Energy broke into an abandoned underground mine, oozing more than 300 million gallons of coal waste into tributaries.

The water supply for more than 25,000 residents was contaminated, and aquatic life in the area perished. It took months to clean up the spill.

"If the estimates are correct, this spill is one and a half times bigger," said Dave Cooper, an environmental advocate with the Mountaintop Removal Road Show, a traveling program that explains the effect of an extreme form of mining.

While the full scope of the TVA spill is being determined, coal critics are already concerned about its long-term effects.

Cleaning up the mess, which could fill nearly 800 Olympic-size swimming pools, could take months or years, Taylor said.

"We're very concerned about how long it's going to take" to clean the spill, she told CNN.

Cooper agreed, saying, "It's 4, 5 feet deep. How are you going to scoop it up? Where are you going to put it?"

While this certainly is detrimental to water quality and public health, it will not destroy the Clinch River. This plant is located just a few miles upstream of the Clinch River's confluence with the Tennessee River. Both are impoundments in these reaches. The lower extent of the Clinch River has long been "destroyed" by Melton Hill and Norris dams and contaminants from Oak Ridge. Well upstream of Norris Reservoir is the stretch where diverse aquatic fauna remains.

Still a good way to get people's attention... There are other plants like this further up where it would matter to the biota.

Todd

For sure. Carbo anyone? There have been plenty of spills this centruy in the watershed that have been unnecessary. The account of the spill in Jenkins and Burkhead is really worth reading or maybe transcribing into the thread. To go down to that area for told of amazing diversity and to see the 1964(?) spill as the slug is coming through is amazing. Chemical spills through various means remain the top or one of the top threats to many of the SE watersheds. Fly ash disposal and holding in general is a nasty thing. There was a major settlement this past year in Maryland because of groundwater contamination from fly ash.

New York Times
December 25, 2008
Coal Ash Spill Revives Issue of Its Hazards
By SHAILA DEWAN

KINGSTON, Tenn. — What may be the nation’s largest spill of coal ash lay thick and largely untouched over hundreds of acres of land and waterways Wednesday after a dam broke this week, as officials and environmentalists argued over its potential toxicity.

Federal studies have long shown coal ash to contain significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems. But with no official word on the dangers of the sludge in Tennessee, displaced residents spent Christmas Eve worried about their health and their property, and wondering what to do.

The spill took place at the Kingston Fossil Plant, a Tennessee Valley Authority generating plant about 40 miles west of Knoxville on the banks of the Emory River, which feeds into the Clinch River, and then the Tennessee River just downstream.

Holly Schean, a waitress whose home, which she shared with her parents, was swept off its foundation when millions of cubic yards of ash breached a retaining wall early Monday morning, said, “They’re giving their apologies, which don’t mean very much.”

The T.V.A., Ms. Schean said, has not yet declared the house uninhabitable. But, she said: “I don’t need your apologies. I need information.”

Even as the authority played down the risks, the spill reignited a debate over whether the federal government should regulate coal ash as a hazardous material. Similar ponds and mounds of ash exist at hundreds of coal plants around the nation.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued no warnings about the potential chemical dangers of the spill, saying there was as yet no evidence of toxic substances. “Most of that material is inert,” said Gilbert Francis Jr., a spokesman for the authority. “It does have some heavy metals within it, but it’s not toxic or anything.”

Mr. Francis said contaminants in water samples taken near the spill site and at the intake for the town of Kingston, six miles downstream, were within acceptable levels.

But a draft report last year by the federal Environmental Protection Agency found that fly ash, a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity, does contain significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations. The report found that the concentrations of arsenic to which people might be exposed through drinking water contaminated by fly ash could increase cancer risks several hundredfold.

Similarly, a 2006 study by the federally chartered National Research Council found that these coal-burning byproducts “often contain a mixture of metals and other constituents in sufficient quantities that they may pose public health and environmental concerns if improperly managed.” The study said “risks to human health and ecosystems” might occur when these contaminants entered drinking water supplies or surface water bodies.

In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed stricter federal controls of coal ash, but backed away in the face of fierce opposition from utilities, the coal industry, and Clinton administration officials. At the time, the Edison Electric Institute, an association of power utilities, estimated that the industry would have to spend up to $5 billion in additional cleanup costs if the substance were declared hazardous. Since then, environmentalists have urged tighter federal standards, and the E.P.A. is reconsidering its decision not to classify the waste as hazardous.

A morning flight over the disaster area showed some cleanup activity along a road and the railroad tracks that take coal to the facility, both heaped in sludge, but no evidence of promised skimmers or barricades on the water to prevent the ash from sliding downstream. The breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape. Where the Clinch River joined the Tennessee, a clear demarcation was visible between the soiled waters of the former and the clear brown broth of the latter.

By afternoon, dump trucks were depositing rock into the river in a race to blockade it before an impending rainstorm washed more ash downstream.

The spill, which released about 300 million gallons of sludge and water, is far larger than the other two similar disasters, said Jeffrey Stant, the director of the Coal Combustion Waste Initiative for the Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental legal group, who has written on the subject for the E.P.A. One spill in 1967 on the Clinch River in Virginia released about 130 million gallons, and the other in 2005 in Northampton County, Pa., released about 100 million gallons into the Delaware River.

The contents of coal ash can vary widely depending on the source, but one study found that the mean concentrations of lead, chromium, nickel and arsenic are three to five times higher in the Appalachian coal that is mined near Kingston than in Rocky Mountain or Northern Plains coal.

Stephen A. Smith, the executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said it was “mind-boggling” that officials had not warned nearby residents of the dangers.

“The fact that they have not warned people, I think, is disastrous and potentially harmful to the residents,” Mr. Smith said. “There are people walking around, checking it out.”

He and other environmentalists warned that another danger would arise when the muck dried out and became airborne and breathable.

Despite numerous reports from recreational anglers and television news video of a large fish kill downstream of the spill, Mr. Francis said the T.V.A.’s environmental team had not encountered any dead fish. On Swan Pond Road, home to the residences nearest the plant, a group of environmental advocates went door to door telling residents that boiling their water, as officials had suggested, would not remove heavy metals.

Environmentalists pointed to the accident as proof of their long-held assertion that there is no such thing as “clean coal,” noting two factors that may have contributed to the scale of the disaster. First, as coal plants have gotten better at controlling air pollution, the toxic substances that would have been spewed into the air have been shifted to solid byproducts like fly ash, and the production of such postcombustion waste, as it is called, has increased sharply.

Second, the Kingston plant, surrounded by residential tracts, had little room to grow and simply piled its ash higher and higher, though officials said the pond whose wall gave way was not over capacity.

Environmental groups have long pressed for coal ash to be buried in lined landfills to prevent the leaching of metals into the soil and groundwater, a recommendation borne out by the 2006 E.P.A. report. An above-ground embankment like the one at Kingston was not an appropriate storage site for fly ash, said Thomas J. FitzGerald, the director of nonprofit Kentucky Resources Council and an expert in coal waste.

“I find it difficult to comprehend that the State of Tennessee would have approved that as a permanent disposal site,” Mr. FitzGerald said.

The T.V.A. will find an alternative place to dispose of the fly ash in the future, Mr. Francis said. He said that at least 30 pieces of heavy machinery had been put in use to begin the cleanup of the estimated 1.7 million cubic yards of ash that spilled from the 80-acre pond, and that work would continue day and night, even on Christmas. The plant, which generates enough electricity to support 670,000 homes, is still functioning, but might run out of coal before the railroad tracks are cleared.

About 15 houses were affected by the flood, Mr. Francis said, and three would likely be declared uninhabitable. “We’re going to make it right,” he said. “We’re going to restore these folks to where they were prior to this incident.”

A spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency, Laura Niles, said the agency was overseeing the cleanup and would decide whether to declare Kingston a Superfund site when the extent of the contamination was known.

United States coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year, the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste. That is enough to fill more than a million railroad coal cars, according to the National Research Council.

Another 2007 E.P.A. report said that over about a decade, 67 towns in 26 states had their groundwater contaminated by heavy metals from such dumps.

For instance, in Anne Arundel County, Md., between Baltimore and Annapolis, residential wells were polluted by heavy metals, including thallium, cadmium and arsenic, leaching from a sand-and-gravel pit where ash from a local power plant had been dumped since the mid-1990s by the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company. Maryland fined the company $1 million in 2007.

As it grew dark in Kingston, a hard rain enveloped Roane County, rendering the twin smokestacks of the steam plant, as locals refer to it, barely visible amid the dingy clouds.

Angela Spurgeon, a teacher and mother of two whose dock was smothered in the ash-slide, said she was worried about the health effects, saying that on the night of the accident everyone was covered in sludge.

“The breathing is what concerns me, the lung issues,” Ms. Spurgeon said. “Who knows what’s in that water?”

This kind of spill has other implications, too. Most of the coal burned in plants like this in the east now come from mountain-top removal mining operations in KY, TN, VA and especially West Virginia. It's bad enough that these operations completely rearrange the mountains themselves, but the spoils from these huge pits are dumped into neighboring valleys and have killed off large stretches of first and second order streams, and generate slow leaching run-off into the surviving streams. As long as this kind of mining is allowed, coal is cheap and safe to handle at power stations. But this is a false economy. This alone is a major reason to aggressively pursue alternative energy technologies.

Bruce, you always summarize things so nicely. Furthermore, I could not agree with you more.

Thanks,

Blake

I found it telling that a house swept off of its foundation by millions of tons of sludge(toxic or not), had not been declared uninhabitable. Also...what of the private property, farms, recreational property..heck, even yards? Do they think any of that will be worth a cent? If I were a land owner I'd be looking at high profile lawyers from either the east or west coast, the kind that love to have a chance to pad their resume', and be in the national spotlight. I'd try to work out something to pay them out of whatever settlement or judgment they could get from the TVA. I'd bet there are lawyers out there who would jump at the chance to nail an environmentally irresponsible company, particularly those based on the west coast, where it would certainly play well at the cocktail parties...
I know, all the above sounds way self serving and manipulative..but oh well. It could well work, could help out the people who's lives have been ruined, AND...would force the issue front and center into the national spotlight. All of the above being said even though I have zero use for Hollywood culture generally! But in this case..use their quest for power and desire for the spotlight, for a good cause!

I just got an email from the Ohio Environmental Council that we had a compromise bill passed in Ohio that leaves DNR in the loop for coal permits this week. The way the bill was written, permits would have been rubber stamped through without any consideration for water quality, habitat or wildlife. One of the streams in the focus was Captina Creek, where we have the only recruiting population of hellbender in Ohio (still it's 8 hours search time to find an individual). I saw the operation this fall for myself, I was shocked to see what they were doing presently was legal. I almost threw caution to the wind, stopped and got photographs, but I was in a UT truck and didn't want to start stuff.

Even still, as Bruce points out, there's still the storage of the slurry that they can't use. This bill really only says "Well, we deem the economics are worth more than the environment around the site, so go on ahead -permitted-". Again, I hope this problem really directs people's attention to the costs that are in "escrow".

The sun is burning every day!

Todd

I know, all the above sounds way self serving and manipulative..but oh well. It could well work, could help out the people who's lives have been ruined, AND...would force the issue front and center into the national spotlight. All of the above being said even though I have zero use for Hollywood culture generally! But in this case..use their quest for power and desire for the spotlight, for a good cause!

I don't think it's self serving or manipulative at all. The way to legally hurt these people the most is financially. Hurt 'em bad enough and it won't be profitable to rape the land, er I mean mine coal.

I don't think it's self serving or manipulative at all. The way to legally hurt these people the most is financially. Hurt 'em bad enough and it won't be profitable to rape the land, er I mean mine coal.

Eh, they'll just pass the costs on to the consumer- in this case, me. A large portion of my coop's electricity is purchased from TVA's giant coal-burning plants at Cumberland City and New Johnsonville, as well as Kentucky Dam. It's not like we can say 'The rates are too high- we won't buy power from you!" I mean, where else will we get it? I don't see the CEMC starting a solar farm here anytime soon- though we are getting a Hemlock semiconductor plant in town; maybe they'll chip in to show off their product!

TVA is a weird entity anyhow. It's a federal department, but seems to be almost autonomous. The upper echelons are rumored to be as corrupt as the Illinois state government. It'll take Congress pulling in the reins, or massive popular complaint, to get them to change anything.

TVA is a weird entity anyhow. It's a federal department, but seems to be almost autonomous. The upper echelons are rumored to be as corrupt as the Illinois state government. It'll take Congress pulling in the reins, or massive popular complaint, to get them to change anything.

The TVA works for the TVA; they're kind of like the old Bell Telephone system, "We don't care, we don't have to." They will bitterly resist any effort to make them change their electricity generating system, whether it's looking for alternatives or merely better scrubbing the emissions from current coal plants. Local employees are usually good, but you're right about the tops.

Eh, they'll just pass the costs on to the consumer- in this case, me. A large portion of my coop's electricity is purchased from TVA's giant coal-burning plants at Cumberland City and New Johnsonville, as well as Kentucky Dam. It's not like we can say 'The rates are too high- we won't buy power from you!" I mean, where else will we get it? I don't see the CEMC starting a solar farm here anytime soon- though we are getting a Hemlock semiconductor plant in town; maybe they'll chip in to show off their product!

TVA is a weird entity anyhow. It's a federal department, but seems to be almost autonomous. The upper echelons are rumored to be as corrupt as the Illinois state government. It'll take Congress pulling in the reins, or massive popular complaint, to get them to change anything.

It's unfortunate that your rates could rise..but the rise would be little compared to the people who have lost their entire lives, and may be faced with nothing in return. The land now is useless, and will have little if any value...so they can't even sell it and move out. My point was to help them recoup their losses, and if the TVA can be knocked down a peg or two at the same time, bonus!

I'm not griping about the rates, just pointing out that a fine won't hurt TVA or encourage them to change their ways, unless it's absurdly huge. If I had my druthers, TVA would be required to buy that land at its pre-spill value and restore it to wilderness. But that probably ain't gonna happen.

Their semi autonomous, yet government status is going to make any litigation difficult. The State of Maryland v. Constellation Energy (BGE's parent company) was the public versus a private company. TVA is not private by any stretch of the means. People are appointed to the top. Getting in with the TVA is still incredibly hard. Really the only way any litigation has ever effected the TVA or given them any resistance is when it's made it to the Supreme Court. They will almost certainly have to relocate people, buy the land, and mitigate the area. Those costs will be minimal to them in the grand scheme of things. The area isn not heavily populated, land is comparitively cheap in Tennessee on the whole, so land next to a massive (and it is) coal plant even before this couldn't have been worth much. Ecologically speaking, there isn't going to be much to mitigate. The lower reaches of the Clinch and Emory are a polar opposites compared to their upper reaches. You can mitigate the metals, solids, etc. all you want. It doesn't change the fact Oak Ridge is immediately upstream along with two major dams.

Nathan, if they bought it, you and I know very well they'd wait 20 years and try and sell it for an insane profit as resort land. Oh wait, they already tried that....

Even better, much of the Tennessee downstream from this site is the source for drinking water, like here in Huntsville. The river is already of dubious quality to begin with, this spill will add a little extra zing to the water I suppose.

Nathan, if they bought it, you and I know very well they'd wait 20 years and try and sell it for an insane profit as resort land. Oh wait, they already tried that....

Are you talking about the Tellico fiasco, or yet another hair-brained TVA scheme? That whole entity needs to be grabbed by the neck and given a good shaking.

Maybe Georgia isn't so hot on the idea of redrawing the state lines to gain drinking water? Yeah, that whole push for Tellico luxury development they were trying a few years ago was a nice way to remind people how they got that land in the first place.

Update from CNN :

1,000,000,000 gallons of sludge shames agency

The head of the nation's largest public power company pledges to clean up the massive spill that has dumped more than a billion gallons of coal waste in central Tennessee. "This is not a time where TVA holds its head high," said Tom Kilgore, president and CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority. "I'm here to tell you that we will clean it up, and we will clean it up right." full story

Talk is cheap...