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

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.

About $32 million of the money gifted to the county by the TVA will go toward county school buildings. Another $10 million will be spent on roads, sewers, library improvements, and the conversion of an old movie house into an arts center.

The county hopes that the improvements and pricey public relations campaign will lure people back to the area. Since the spill, property values have plummeted, residents have moved away, and tourism has waned.

Environmentalists feared that the toxins in the coal ash could cause serious problems for both residents and wildlife in the area. Coal ash contains dangers materials such as arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium – toxins that have been linked to dangerous health conditions such as cancer, liver damage and neurological complications. Many people living in and around the spill site have complained of respiratory problems and some, including a young child, have tested positive for heavy metals in their blood.

Will the improvements and public relations campaign help the community recover from the damage the spill did not only to its land but also to its image? Some residents are skeptical. “It’s another way that TVA is going to project a positive image while so many of us are in really, really bad shape,” resident Sarah McCoin was quoted in The Leaf Chronicle, “and TVA has totally ignored that they’ve destroyed our community.”

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.