Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Three million tons of toxic coal ash recovered from east Tennessee from a breached impoundment at a coal-firing plant which sent a wave of the dangerous material on to a neighboring community, will be moved to Perry County, Alabama, and stored in a privately owned landfill near Uniontown. The deal could generate $4.1 million in fees and more than 50 jobs to the community, which has the highest unemployment rate in the state. But residents are hardly optimistic.

“I’m not crazy about it,” said Hank James in an interview with the Tuscaloosa News. “From what I’ve read, it doesn’t sound like a great thing for any community to deal with.”

Coal ash is not classified as a hazardous material by the Environmental Protection Agency, but since 2000, improved pollution controls have kept toxins from leaving smokestacks and thus have increased the amount of toxins in coal ash. The material may contain arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium, which can contribute to serious health complications such as cancer, liver damage and neurological complications.

When the coal ash spill occurred last December, more than a billion gallons poured over 300 acres of a nearby community, knocking homes off their foundations and piling as high as nine feet in some areas. Numerous people have been displaced, some have suffered medical complications, and despite TVA’s claims to fully restore the property, some say it will always hold traces of dangerous materials that can harm wildlife and plant life that live off the land and in the waterways.

More than half of the recovered coal ash is expected to be stored in the rural Alabama town. A breach similar to that at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) plant in Kingston, Tennessee, could devastate the impoverished Perry County.

Perry County officials contend that the Arrowhead Landfill, where the recovered coal ash will be stored, was built to modern standards and is in full compliance with ADEM regulations. The landfill is lined with a heavy plastic to keep toxins from seeping into the ground and a purification system is capable of cleaning the fluids to a level clean enough to dump into nearby streams. A series of wells will help monitor to ensure hazardous toxins don’t get into drinking water.

But those reassurances aren’t enough to sway some concerned citizens. “As far as making any kind of benefit for this community, I don’t see any,” says John Osemer, 87, a lifelong resident of Uniontown.

Image courtesy Tuscaloosa News

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