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If the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules that coal ash waste from utility plants should be classified as a hazardous material, the ripple effect could hit Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) customers right in the wallet.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is enjoying record-breaking sales of its energy, setting records in demand for the 7-day period that ended Sunday. Total weekly energy use throughout the TVA’s 7-state region was more than 200 gigawatt hours higher than the previous record, set August 12, 2007. Total weekly energy use was recorded at 4.633 gigawatt hours, another record for the nation’s largest utility. TVA serves more than 9 million customers in Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Concerned citizens and environmental activists are opposing plans to expand a coal ash pond along the Ohio River in northern Kentucky because they say if the pond ruptures, it could contaminate drinking water. The proposal from LG&E would build 100-foot-tall walls around an existing coal ash pond, giving it more capacity than the coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Kingston, Tenn., plant, which failed last year and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic waste on to a neighboring community.
That spill, called one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, knocked houses off their foundations, damaged property and contaminated waterways. The TVA is currently undergoing an estimated three-year, $1.2 billion cleanup effort to restore the land.
Indiana and Kentucky have the most coal ash ponds in the country and many of those ponds have numerous deficiencies and were built without trained engineers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA conducted the survey on the nation’s coal ash ponds following last December’s massive spill in which a coal ash impoundment pond at a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal-firing plant in east Tennessee broke, sending 1.1 gallons of toxic sludge onto 300 acres of a neighboring community. The coal ash destroyed homes, damaged property and contaminated nearby waterways, and is being blamed for making many locals sick.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board of Directors is expected to approve a plan to convert the agency’s six wet-ash storage ponds at coal-firing plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky to dry ash storage within eight years. TVA CEO Tom Kilgore has been discussing the likelihood since just after a coal ash storage ponds at the TVA’s Kingston, Tennessee plant failed, sending 1.1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash onto a neighboring community.
The spill destroyed homes and damaged property, creating one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history. It also stirred up a flurry of concern from concerned citizens and environmentalists who argue that coal ash sites should fall under federal regulation as a hazardous material, as the material can be detrimental to human life.
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.
President Obama’s new energy policies are pitting mining companies and environmentalists against each other as the federal government explores new ways of storing carbon emissions. Mining companies and the lawmakers who support them say that establishing these new measures could cost billions while environmentalists say the price is not important in comparison to the ecological damage of continuing common practices.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) may turn to its residential customer base to help pay for the escalating costs to clean up the widespread damage caused when one of its coal ash ponds failed last December, pouring more than a billion gallons of toxic ash and sludge onto 300 acres of rural east Tennessee, according to the Jackson Sun.
Two small leaks that preceded December’s Kingston, Tennessee coal ash spill by years went largely ignored by the Tennessee Valley Authority, according to Forbes/Associated Press. The spill dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic ash and mud on to 300 acres of a rural east Tennessee neighborhood, pouring into nearby rivers and destroying property and wildlife in its wake. What remains are remnants of dangerous materials including arsenic, lead, chromium, manganese and barium.
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
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