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

Two years after an impoundment pond containing toxic coal ash at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) fossil fuel plant broke, spilling a billion gallons of sludge onto 300 acres of rural east Tennessee, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) still isn’t sure whether to recommend that coal ash be classified as a hazardous material. Shortly after the spill, the agency was charged with recommending a classification for the material as part of a federal investigation into the environmental disaster.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has been slapped with $11.5 million in fines by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for violating state clean-water and solid waste disposal laws following the December 2008 coal ash spill in an east Tennessee community. In a statement released to media, Environment Commissioner Jim Fyke called the fines an appropriate response “to an unprecedented event.”

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) received word Monday that it will be required to pay $11.5 million in fines as a result of a December 2008 coal ash spill at its Kingston, Tenn., coal-fired power plant. The fine was levied by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation after the agency determined the TVA is guilty of violating state clean-water and solid waste disposal laws. The Dec. 22, 2008, spill dumped about a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge on the Kingston community, located about 35 miles west of Knoxville, spreading across more than 300 acres of land and contaminating the adjacent Emory River.

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Another preventable environmental crisis strikes again, leaving behind a murky forecast for those in its wake. First there was the coal ash spill that dumped a billion gallons of sludge on to homes, property and waterways in east Tennessee. Then came the massive oil spill following an explosion in a rig 50 miles off the Louisiana coastline, a still uncontained problem that is oozing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean wreaking havoc in its wake.

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People who live near coal-burning power plants have as high as a 1 in 50 chance of developing cancer and have an increased risk of damage to their lungs, kidneys, liver and other organs, according to a 2009 report by environmental legal advocacy group, Earthjustice. Elisa Young, a resident of Meigs County, Ohio, the site of the country’s second-largest concentration of coal-firing plants, says she’s seen the havoc coal waste has wreaked on her family and friends. “I’ve lost neighbors to lung cancer who have never smoked,” she told Huffington Post. “I’ve lost them to brain cancer, breast, throat , colon, multiple myeloma, pre-leukemia. … There isn’t a house on this road that hasn’t been touched by cancer.”

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Plaintiffs in three class action lawsuits have joined forces to fight the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and two of its consultants for compensation to cover unspecified damages and payment for medical monitoring as a result of the December 2008 coal ash spill from the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in east Tennessee. The amended complaint redefines the class of potential plaintiffs, which includes anyone who owns property in the Swan Pond community around the plant north of the Clinch River, anyone who lived in the same area when the spill occurred, and anyone who owns property on Watts Bar Lake from the mouth of the Emory River to Watts Bar Dam. Attorneys say the classification could add hundreds more plaintiffs to the lawsuit.

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“Are the people of Perry County, Ala., less valuable than the people in Kingston, Tenn.?” asks Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathen. The activist sent a complaint letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Lisa Jackson this week in an effort to stop shipments of coal ash recovered from the east Tennessee spill site to a poor, black community in Alabama. Residents near the Uniontown, Ala., landfill say the coal ash is stinking up their town. And they, too, worry that the same toxic sludge that poured down on the community of Kingston causing serious damage and threatening human health, may create problems for them as well.

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The cleanup effort in east Tennessee following the December 2008 spill of coal ash from a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) impoundment pond is costing more than the utility had expected, but so far the results look promising, says director of the TVA’s cleanup effort, Steve McCracken.

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A group of Illinois lawmakers are asking the White House not to classify coal ash as a hazardous material because doing so would cripple their state’s economy. In a letter to the Office of Management and Budget, the bipartisan group of congressmen expressed concerns that reclassifying the byproduct from coal-firing plants would raise the cost of energy for Illinois consumers. It would also hamper local utilities’ ability to recycle the coal ash in products like cement, concrete and other building materials, a process that the group says generates thousands of jobs in Illinois.

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It was bad enough when the coal ash impoundment pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston, Tenn., plant holding more than a billion gallons of toxic sludge ruptured, sending a wave of coal ash onto a neighboring community and into nearly waterways. Cleaning it up hasn’t been a walk on the beach. One challenge was locating a landfill that would accept the recovered coal ash. The newest issue is finding a company willing to treat the wastewater from that landfill.

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