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

Six generations of Jere McCraw’s family are buried on his 300-acre farm near Bridgeport, Ala. The land has been in his family since 1830, and he doesn’t want to sell it. But a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal ash pond in nearby Widows Creek is threatening his land.

Last January, just one month after a coal ash pond at the TVA’s Kingston, Tenn., plant broke, sending a wave of toxic sludge on to 300 acres of neighboring property and waterways, contaminated water accidentally leaked from the Widows Creek plant. The TVA recalculated that pond’s rating as “high hazard” and spent $2 million to upgrade the ponds. The nation’s largest utility vowed to convert the ponds from wet to dry storage, considered a safer storage alternative. And, as a precaution, TVA also is buying property adjacent to the coal ash ponds where the leak occurred, land that is also adjacent to McCraw’s farm, property that is also historically significant as the site of the Civil War’s Battle of Bridgeport.

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Toxic coal ash recovered from a massive spill site in east Tennessee was deemed too dangerous by the state of Pennsylvania to be stored there, but some Alabama officials welcomed that coal ash with open arms. One U.S. Representative from Alabama is standing up for the people, urging the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish consistent standards at the federal level that would fully address legitimate concerns about the content of coal ash waste.

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Cumberland County, Tennessee, officials saw dollar signs and improved highways when they approved the relocation of coal ash recovered from a neighboring spill site to a landfill atop Smith Mountain. “I call it the Good Neighbor Plan,” says Commissioner Lynn Tollett. “We’ve got a place to put (the recovered coal ash). We can help out and we’re going to gain some income at a time when the economy is not what it ought to be.”

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A 1 ½-mile stretch of the Emory River in east Tennessee will remain closed to boat traffic through mid-February – several months longer than expected – while the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) continues to dredge the river to remove toxic coal ash that spilled there following a coal ash impoundment pond breach last December. The dredging is part of a three-year, $1 billion cleanup of the area with hopes to restore the land and waterways that were badly damaged and contaminated following the massive spill.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is clearing coal ash that spilled into the Emory River faster than originally anticipated, shipping it to a landfill in Alabama by the railcar load. The recovered coal ash is part of a more than billion-gallon spill from an impoundment pond at the TVA’s Kingston, Tenn., coal-firing plant last December.

That spill, considered one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, destroyed homes, damaged property, sickened residents, and left a deep scar on the county’s public image. Now that toxic material recovered from the river is shipping to the poor and predominantly black county in Alabama in epic speed.

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Lesley Stahl, a reporter for the CBS news program 60 Minutes, pressed a power industry lobbyist about whether coal ash byproducts are being used safely during a report on coal ash recycling practices Sunday. His answer was anything but straight. It’s no surprise. The byproducts from coal-burning utilities, coal ash and fly ash, are recycled and used as filler for numerous products in kitchen counters and carpeting in schools, to name a few. Coal ash has not considered a hazardous material, and thus coal-burning plants have not fallen under federal regulations. But since the country’s largest spill of coal ash occurred last December, people are beginning to question just how safe coal ash – and the products made from it – are.

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An east Tennessee county littered with more than a billion gallons of toxic sludge will spend $1 million of the $43 million given to it by the utility that damaged the adjacent land to clean up the community’s tattered image.

The money was given to Roane County, Tenn., last month by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to help bolster the community’s public image and improve its infrastructure. The utility’s offering comes in the midst of a multi-year, $1 billion cleanup of hundreds of acres in the county that was damaged when a coal ash impoundment pond burst last December, sending a wave of toxic material onto property and into the Emory River.

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