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Customers of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) are footing the bill for the massive billion-dollar cleanup effort in an east Tennessee community where more than a billion gallons of coal ash spilled creating the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. However, because of a drop in fuel costs, customers aren’t seeing much change in their bills. If fuel prices creep back up, customers will be in for an unpleasant surprise.
“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.
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.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is putting smokestack scrubbers at its Kingston, Tenn., plant, which will clean a greenhouse gas that comes out of its smokestacks and into the air. But in order to do so, the nation’s largest utility will also have to create a new landfill to store the material left behind.
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.
The new chairman for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) says the disastrous coal ash spill that dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to an east Tennessee community and into the Emory River must never happen again, according to WHNT-TV.
Even though the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is monitoring the air and water near Kingston, Tennessee, for dangerous levels of toxins, Sandy Gupton takes water samples from the flooding on her farm just to be sure.
“Our farm is the largest acreage affected,” said Sandy’s husband Terry in an interview to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “TVA does not want to admit that the spill has devastated our lives, tainted our land and reduced our livelihood to a fraction of what it was before the spill.”
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is being asked to cover the cost of a three-year, $1.9 million public relations campaign aimed at improving the image of Kingston, Tennessee. The nation’s largest public utility is being blamed for tarnishing the region’s reputation. Once thought of as a destination for water sports and recreation, the east Tennessee community, which includes parts of the Emory River, is now covered in a mass of toxic debris that locals feel may cause them serious illness.
Coal ash that poured from the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston, Tennessee, Fossil Plant onto an east Tennessee community last December and recovered by cleanup crews is far too toxic to be stored in Pennsylvania’s coal mines, according to officials in that state. Authorities issued a statement saying it has strict regulations for the material to be stored there.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed an enforceable agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to oversee the removal of coal ash from its east Tennessee fossil fuel plant where a coal ash impoundment breached and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash on to a neighboring community and into the Emory River. The TVA was also ordered to reimburse the EPA for any costs associated with its oversight of the cleanup.
