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

“How do you spell relief? COAL ASH,” says Perry County, Alabama Commissioner Albert Turner, Jr., in remarks prepared for a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment. Turner testified this week about how the historically poor and black county is benefiting from shipments of coal ash recovered from the east Tennessee community where it spilled from a neighboring coal-firing plant. The problem is residents of Perry County are more apt to call the arrangement a nightmare rather than a boon to the community.

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It is not uncommon for industries to sell byproducts for profit. For example, the Tennessee Valley Authority sells some of the coal ash it produces, a byproduct from coal-burning, to companies for use as a filler in concrete in roads, bridges and concrete blocks; material for wallboard; granules for roofing shingles; grit for sandblasters; filler for recreation areas such as ball fields and industrial parks; and fertilizer for crops. It is considered safe for those uses even though coal ash has been found to contain dangerous toxins such as arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium – materials that have been linked to serious health concerns like cancer, liver damage and neurological complications.

But sometimes materials that we think are safe for use are in fact harmful to humans. Consider this sad story now being played out in Lawrence County, Alabama.

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At 80, Ruby Holmes doesn’t have much fight left in her. So she sits in her home and deals with the deck she’s been given. In her community, which used to be in a place she called a “quiet, beautiful place … nothing but fresh air,” she can no longer open the windows. “That stuff, whatever it is over there, wakes me up, it smells so bad,” she told the Birmingham News. Holmes lives not far from the Arrowhead Landfill in Perry County, Ala., the same landfill that is taking in millions of tons of coal ash recovered from east Tennessee, where more than a billion gallons of the toxic material spilled from a neighboring coal ash impoundment pond.

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Tina Nicholson walks down her driveway in Cumberland County, Tenn., every afternoon to meet her kids as they get off the school bus. They often detour down the winding Smith Mountain Road to look at wild growing herbs and enjoy the fresh air. The road is so narrow that when cars pass by, the Nicholson family has to step into a ditch that runs parallel to the road to make room. “Two regular cars cannot pass each other on this road as it is,” she says.

But if Crossville Coal Company and Smith Mountain Solutions have their way and are allowed to reclaim a surface mine on top of Smith Mountain to store coal ash recovered from the east Tennessee site of a massive coal ash spill, the narrow roadway where the Nicholsons walk will become even more treacherous with heavy trucks carrying tons of coal ash.

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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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Nine months after more than a billion gallons of coal ash tumbled from an impoundment pond at a Kingston, Tenn., coal-firing plant and created one of the nation’s largest environmental disasters, only one-third of the total sludge has been removed from the Emory River, leaving behind 2 million cubic yards in the river and 2.4 million cubic yards in Swan Pond Creek and neighboring land. The cleanup effort is still months – maybe years – away from completion and is expected to cost the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) at least $1 billion by the time it is complete.

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