Poor, black counties to receive coal ash from TVA cleanup
Criticism continues to fly as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) labors on with its extensive and expensive coal ash cleanup effort following the December 22, 2008, spill from its Kingston, Tennessee, fossil fuel plant. A breach in an impoundment pond dumped more than a billion gallons of coal ash on to a neighboring community, destroying homes and damaging property in its wake. The Institute for Southern Studies now finds that the counties where the utility will be dumping much of the coal ash retrieved from the community in which it was spilled are largely populated by African Americans and have high poverty rates.