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Washington lawmakers are now more in touch with the coal ash spill travesty that dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to 300 acres of residential property in east Tennessee last December. Sunday night, a pipeline at a Maryland coal-burning power plant ruptured and leaked about 4,000 gallons of coal ash sludge into the Potomac River, according to the Boston Herald.
Residents in and around Pettus, W. Va., gathered at the gate of the Marfork Coal Company earlier this week to protest the company’s plans to start blasting on Coal River Mountain, warning that Massey Energy’s coal mining operation efforts could weaken an eight-billion-gallon coal sludge dam, according to the Virtualization/PRNewswire-USNewswire. The dam in question is about 10 times larger than the coal ash pond that in December spilled more than a billion gallons of toxic material over 300 acres of rural east Tennessee.
A memo that apparently passed through the hands of several folks at the TVA drafting “talking points” about the Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill of Dec. 22 appears to attempt to minimize the significance of the disaster, according to a report today from the Associated Press.
The memo was apparently sent to the AP by accident, according to their report. They say the memo shows additions and deletions that change more alarming language to tone down the sense of urgency and threat resulting from the coal ash spill.
An example cited by the AP story says the word “catastrophic” was changed to “sudden, accidental release” when describing the spill that flooded more than 300 acres surrounding the energy production plant with toxic coal ash sludge.
While environmentalists are pointing to the memo as evidence that TVA is trying to cover up the seriousness of the situation, TVA representatives say that they were simply trying to present accurate information as they understood it at the beginning of the crisis, the AP reports. As the situation developed, the TVA says it modified its information to upgrade the severity of the situation, the report states.
By Dave Burdick
December 30, 2008
The online environmental community is abuzz with reports of all kinds about the coal ash sludge spill in Tennessee, ranging from first-hand accounts to health concerns to worries about coal in general. Twitter in particular has been a place where people have been posting news stories and concerns.
A local blog also posted before and after photos of the affected area.
Joe Romm blogs at ClimateProgress that the muck has a lot of people worried about how easy it would be for another such spill to happen:
Coal ash deposits in the USA are now under renewed scrutiny after a giant spill just before Christmas released 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic sludge into Tennessee waterways. Water tests near the spill from the Kingston Fossil Plant showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders. The spill muddied the waters in the Emory river and is flowing into tributaries of the Tennessee River – the water supply for Chattanooga and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.
So now a big question mark hangs over the hundreds of coal plants all across the country which store their fly ash in unlined embankments and ponds — like the one that failed last week. Most are situated near rivers that supply water needed by the coal plants to operate.
The NY Times reported that in the US, coal plants produce 129 million tons of postcombustion byproducts a year. It’s the second-largest waste stream in the country, after municipal solid waste, and it’s storage and handling is unregulated. Who knew?
Source: Huffington Post
