Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

“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.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is clearing coal ash that spilled into the Emory River faster than originally anticipated, shipping it to a landfill in Alabama by the railcar load. The recovered coal ash is part of a more than billion-gallon spill from an impoundment pond at the TVA’s Kingston, Tenn., coal-firing plant last December.

That spill, considered one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, destroyed homes, damaged property, sickened residents, and left a deep scar on the county’s public image. Now that toxic material recovered from the river is shipping to the poor and predominantly black county in Alabama in epic speed.

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Three million tons of toxic coal ash recovered from east Tennessee from a breached impoundment at a coal-firing plant which sent a wave of the dangerous material on to a neighboring community, will be moved to Perry County, Alabama, and stored in a privately owned landfill near Uniontown. The deal could generate $4.1 million in fees and more than 50 jobs to the community, which has the highest unemployment rate in the state. But residents are hardly optimistic.

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