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

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.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is facing a new round of headaches since its coal ash impoundment failed last December and dumped a billion gallons of toxic coal ash on to an east Tennessee neighborhood. Now it is facing the wrath of the magistrate judge in the case, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) has paid east Tennessee home and landowners more than $9.5 million to compensate them for damages after the utility’s Kingston, Tennessee coal ash impoundment failed late last year and poured more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge on to a rural community, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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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.

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Southern California community members worried about the ill effects from coal-burning mines and power plants are conducting a 100-day national campaign uniting 100 communities in the area urging lawmakers to phase out of coal-based energy and transition to cleaner, renewable sources that would produce more green jobs, according to the Palm Springs (California) My Desert.

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Washington lawmakers are now more in touch with the coal ash spill travesty that dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic material on to 300 acres of residential property in east Tennessee last December. Sunday night, a pipeline at a Maryland coal-burning power plant ruptured and leaked about 4,000 gallons of coal ash sludge into the Potomac River, according to the Boston Herald.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has promised to make good on a promise it made nine years ago to issue regulations for coal ash storage. The announcement comes more than two months after a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) impoundment pond failed and dumped more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash on to 300 acres of east Tennessee property, destroying homes and damaging land in its wake.

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A memo that apparently passed through the hands of several folks at the TVA drafting “talking points” about the Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill of Dec. 22 appears to attempt to minimize the significance of the disaster, according to a report today from the Associated Press.

The memo was apparently sent to the AP by accident, according to their report. They say the memo shows additions and deletions that change more alarming language to tone down the sense of urgency and threat resulting from the coal ash spill.

An example cited by the AP story says the word “catastrophic” was changed to “sudden, accidental release” when describing the spill that flooded more than 300 acres surrounding the energy production plant with toxic coal ash sludge.

While environmentalists are pointing to the memo as evidence that TVA is trying to cover up the seriousness of the situation, TVA representatives say that they were simply trying to present accurate information as they understood it at the beginning of the crisis, the AP reports. As the situation developed, the TVA says it modified its information to upgrade the severity of the situation, the report states.

A report published today by the Birmingham News says the coal ash retaining ponds at two Birmingham-area coal-fired energy plants contain the highest levels of arsenic in the country, ranked and Nos. 2 and 3 on a list compiled by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). The study evaluates the amount of ash deposited in on-site ash ponds and landfills from 2000-2006, according to the News report.

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