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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is eying a dormant landfill near its Kingston, Tennessee, plant and an abandoned strip mine in Cumberland County, Tennessee, as possible locations to bury the ash it is cleaning up after one of its impoundment ponds leaked and dumped more than a billion gallons of coal ash on to an east Tennessee community, according to WAAY-TV.
The huge cleanup effort by the nation’s largest public utility could cost as much as $150 million more than previously estimated, according to the Associated Press. The effort to restore 300 acres of east Tennessee property damaged by the December 2008 coal ash spill from a Kingston, Tennessee, coal-firing plant is also expected to take years to complete.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will send its first teams of inspectors to coal ash storage areas across the country within weeks, according to Knoxville Business News. The inspections are the first step in developing new coal ash regulations for an industry not currently overseen by federal regulations.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has paid more than $20 million buying 71 properties in the east Tennessee community that were affected by the December 2008 coal ash impoundment breach. And while TVA is negotiating to buy more, it has already turned down 160 other offers from residents in the area, according to Forbes/Associated Press.
Power plants in the U.S. produce more than 125 million tons of coal combustion waste each year, most of which ends up in dry landfills or in above-ground coal slurry pounds. In 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) listed that material as non-hazardous and thus it didn’t fall under any strict government regulations.
Residents of east Tennessee probably thought little of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal-firing plant in Kingston, or the toxic brew of coal ash that had been brimming in an impoundment pond for years. But as residents built homes on property just miles away and fished and boated in the Emory River that snaked nearby, the pond walls were beginning to seep and were showing erosion scarring in some areas.
For decades, engineers raised questions about the walls of an impoundment pond containing toxic coal ash at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston, Tennessee coal-burning plant, according to the KnoxvilleBiz.com. They questioned the way the walls were built and argued that they were not initially designed to stand as tall as they did. Those concerns fell on deaf ears then, but now have a voice after the walls of the pond broke loose last December and dumped 1.1 billion gallons of toxic material on to 300 acres of an east Tennessee community and into the waters of the Emory River.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) may have to lean on customers to relieve some of its financial pains, according to the Associated Press. The nation’s largest utility is spending $1 million a day to clean up the mess left behind when a coal ash impoundment pond at its Kingston, Tennessee coal-burning plant failed and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to an east Tennessee community and into the Emory River. The coal ash spill cleanup effort is expected to cost the utility between $525 million and $825 million.
Problems continue to mount for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). This week a federal judge upheld an order handed down in January that the TVA accelerate its billion-dollar program to clean up four of its coal plants in Tennessee and Alabama so the plants could stop polluting the air in North Carolina, according to the Associated Press/Forbes.
A congressional committee will focus on why a large Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal ash impoundment failed last December, which resulted in one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, according to News Channel 5. The breach caused more than a billion gallons of coal ash sludge to spill on to 300 acres of an east Tennessee community, destroying homes and damaging property in its wake. Coal ash contains dangerous toxins such as arsenic and lead which can contribute to serious health problems such as cancer, liver damage and neurological problems.
