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Cancer rates among people living near coal ash ponds are “disturbingly high,” according to Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice, nonprofit organizations that studied Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data from 210 coal ash ponds across the United States. The data is compiled in a report titled, “Coming Clean: What EPA Knows About the Dangers of Coal Ash.”
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.
Lawmakers sit on both sides of the argument about whether lining the coal ash impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston, Tennessee, plant would have prevented the massive spill of toxic material onto neighboring homes and property, but legislation is moving through the Tennessee House and Senate that would require such ponds created or expanded in the future to be lined, according to the Times Free Press.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has asked a federal judge to dismiss all lawsuits filed against it as a result of the December 22, 2008, coal ash spill at the utility’s Kingston, Tennessee, coal-firing plant, according to the Ledger-Enquirer/Associated Press. The spill occurred when a coal ash impoundment pond failed and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to 300 acres of a neighboring community and into the Emory River.
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.
When the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) coal ash impoundment pond burst last December, it did more than dump a billion gallons of toxic material on to peoples’ property and into Emery River where people from all around would fish, boat and swim. It destroyed homes in its wake, and quickly diminished property values. And it created a nuisance not just to those who had to flee the area, but to the ones who stayed who now live with the 20-hour-a-day, continuous cleanup effort by the TVA.
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.
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