Tennessee coal ash disaster three times larger than originally estimated.
Tennessee coal ash disaster three times larger than originally estimated.
On Monday, toxic coal sludge burst through a retention wall in eastern Tennessee, causing massive property and environmental damage. Federal studies have shown that coal ash contains “significant quantities of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium, which can cause cancer and neurological problems.” The incident — already being called the “largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States” — may now be even worse than originally anticipated. Tennessee Valley Authority officials “initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled” in the disaster. Yesterday, however, they “released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.”
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Coal is “clean”! It’s just the sludge that’s “dirty”!
December 27th, 2008 at 12:08 pmI hope this disaster has at least the silver lining of getting the “clean coal” ads off the airwaves. Now.
PEACE
December 27th, 2008 at 12:12 pmThis ads a new aspect to the “not in my backyard” sentiment.
Just what, exactly, were the utility companies planning to DO with this 1.7 million tons of toxic waste?
Save it for our grandchildren to deal with?
December 27th, 2008 at 12:21 pmBut, but, but the TVA says that everything is O.K. and that pile of dead fish only died because of a big wave.
¶ AIO
December 27th, 2008 at 12:23 pmPerfect for growing a garden….get your trace minerals….better than compost….no insect problems.
December 27th, 2008 at 12:28 pmThis is an interesting story paired with the entry at America Blog where John gives his reasoning for posting “Clean Coal” ads!
December 27th, 2008 at 12:36 pmAdd this as another fine mess bull shit bush and his cronie’s left us in…Blessings
December 27th, 2008 at 12:42 pmWhere is FEMA? Where is the EPA? Where is Bush? Where is Senator Corker? Why hasn’t this been identified as a National Disater? Where is the MSM?
December 27th, 2008 at 12:55 pmWhat coal ash disaster?
I heard they found Caylee Anthony’s body…
December 27th, 2008 at 1:14 pm(is Nancy Grace bugf uck insane, or what?)
Come on Obama, say it: CLAEN COAL.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:28 pmWe should be using wind, solar and geothermal energy! Bring the eletrical car back!
December 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pmI suppose this means we have to bail out the perps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i_vquVDPgU
December 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pmPROVO, Utah (AP) — Within six months of discovering a massive geothermal field, a small Utah company had erected and fired up a power plant — just one example of the speed with which companies are capitalizing on state mandates for alternative energy.
No Ash… No CO2… No Mining…
December 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pmThis disaster has me wondering: What do coal companies, local and federal governments usually do with coal sludge? (or whatever you call it)
It’s sludge, and it’s toxic. Had it not spilled, what were they planning to do with it? How were they going to dispose of it? Were they going to bury it?
I read somewhere that there are hundreds of coal ash “pools” around the country. Where does all that waste go?
In the meantime -and as usual- the media is talking about this mess as if it were a natural event, like high surf, a blizzard, or a tornado: No questions are asked and nobody is responsible. Shameful.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:15 pmGosh, I sure do miss those singings lumps of coal.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:24 pmWill corker and mcconnell be asking for disaster relief from the feds, or will they tell Tennesseans to get out their shovels and deal with it?
Plus, didn’t Bush just sign a midnight regulation allowing coal mine debris to be deposited in streams and valleys? Why not mix the two pollutants and see what comes of it?
December 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pmI told my republican father in law that bob corkers flippant words about the workers in the automotive industry would come back and bite him in his ugly ass. I hope the people of Tennessee suffer for decades.Not one tear will be shed by this auto worker.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:22 pmGood work, I would have never heard about this had I not seen it here.
I would still rather pay the premium for solar power if it meant this would stop happening. The age of dumping your used motor oil behind your garage is long gone, how much longer do we have to deal with this?
December 27th, 2008 at 3:53 pmThis spill is worse than I thought:
…approximately 500 million gallons of nasty black coal ash flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River – the water supply for Chattanooga TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Both humans and dogs who drank some of the normally pure water supplies near the spill have supposedly become violently ill with bouts of vomiting.
December 27th, 2008 at 3:58 pmI am honored: My comment is awaiting moderation.
December 27th, 2008 at 5:57 pmNow this:
December 27th, 2008 at 6:04 pmAnd now the Tennessee River is a H a z M a t area. Makes L o v e C a n a l look like a tea cup.
Four tries and it got through. Should we double space all of our comments?
December 27th, 2008 at 6:38 pmAs of last night, TVA authorities were telling people drinking water is safe, and just to “boil it” … yeah cuz we all know that arsenic and mercury can be cleaned out of drinking water simply by boiling it!!!! NOT!
This isn’t just a Tennessee issue, peeps. As I blogged over at my place this morning, 50% of electricity in the US comes from burning coal. If you use electricity and are on the grid, chances are you’re burning coal. I urge everyone to contact their representatives and demand that action is taken to ensure the coal ash waste in your part of the country is being disposed over as safely as technology allows, and by all means, let’s put a stop to future coal plant construction (and there are LOTS in the works …) This should be Big Coal’s Three Mile Island …
December 27th, 2008 at 6:40 pmmcconnell is the senator from KY. Tennessee’s senators are Corker and Lamar Alexander. Lamar is the one who famously killed wind energy tax credits because he was worried a proposed wind farm would hurt property values near acreage he owns in East Tennessee …
December 27th, 2008 at 6:43 pmLamar Alexander famously killed wind energy tax credits because he was worried a proposed wind farm would hurt property values near acreage he owns in East Tennessee …
Justice would require that Sen. Alexander owns Tennessee Riverfront property near Chatenooga.
In 2000, Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee in large part because of his Environmentally Concerned position on COAL…thus allowing Bush to steal the election.
December 27th, 2008 at 6:52 pmHow sad that this happens in the land of Happy Jebus Chris Freaks. Can’t their gawd protect them from sh|t?
I guess god hates the coal he created….Is coal (teh) gay?
December 27th, 2008 at 7:41 pmClearly, God has raised his shield of protection from Tennessee. They must have been doin’ some sinnin’.
We need to get the Clean Coal Carolers in on this, stat!
But seriously, this really is like the Three Mile Island of the coal industry. We’re going to be hearing about spiking disease rates around this area for decades now. And yeah, is having lakes of heavy metal sludge a good way to store the waste? Maybe they should be doing something else with it, like drying it out into some kind of pellets or something, putting it in canisters or whatever. I’m sure that would be horrifically expensive to the coal industry, which means it’d be just about right.
December 27th, 2008 at 9:20 pmIn the old days, when bricks were fired, the coal wastes from the previous kiln were used in the mix for the next batch of bricks. Why not develop a recipe that utilizes the waste from this spill to create bricks for the GWB pResidential Liebrary?
December 27th, 2008 at 10:15 pmAnd by the way, has anyone ever heard of cinder blocks?
December 27th, 2008 at 10:22 pm25. Southern Bell – You’re kidding – they’re still saying to Boil (which would only concentrate the heavy metals and Polycyclics potentially making them worse).
Hasn’t anyone in the media called them on that one yet ?
I realize that Boil orders are standard when conditions may have broken a water line or flushed material in a well – both because of possible bacterial contamination.
But come on now ! Acting like boiling will destroy everything bad ?
December 27th, 2008 at 11:57 pmThanks for the heads-up about the excuse-making over at AmericaBlog. It’s always nice to see liberal unity. Jeeee-zuss-wept!
B-T-W, for those who don’t know, Southern West Virginia is dotted with sludge seas that make the TVA sludge dam look like a puddle by comparison. One even hangs over an elementary school.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:58 pm16. Gregor Samsa –
What do they do with all that bad stuff they generate ? One hint is why they had so much potentially toxic material confined on the site – One of the most common actions is to contain it onsite (and hope something happens in the next few decades to make the problem all better).
Other alternatives are to ship to a hazardous waste landfill (very expensive) or try some way to encapsulate it (basically make an impermeable burrito with the toxic stuff in the center). In some cases, you can combine the toxic material with some other compound that binds up the toxic material.
The coal isn’t all that different than a lot of toxic waste sites from Mine Tailings. They are quite troublesome because you have so much (in terms of tons of contaminated soil).
December 28th, 2008 at 12:02 amI heard that when they clean it up they are going to put it right back in the same location.
December 28th, 2008 at 12:14 amI live in TN…in Nashville which is blue or I couldn’t abide it…Anyhow, our Gov’t oversight is a joke. We have dirty air in East Tn, we have a law called “the Right to Work” which is newsspeak for the right to fire for any reason, we have few unions and we give companies big breaks to put plants here..So this does not suprise me in the least…I have had to deal with several issues with local and State gov’t..it is still good ole boy politics..and decisions are usually based on $$$. East TN is red, red, red..I wonder how they will feel about lack of regulation on this one?
December 28th, 2008 at 8:13 amsybster1000, there’s an irony to East TN being, as you say “red, red, red.” It’s the same part of the state that once REFUSED to support the Confederacy and helped bring about its demise. Now it’s a “conservative” stronghold and is helping to bring about its own.
The irony isn’t lost on me that this is the same area that also produced the right-wing terrorist who shot up a Unitarian congregation a few months past.
The fact is, just as many said “you can’t judge that killer based on what he listened to and read,” I’m sure there are already some folks complaining that it was “gummint regalashun” that led to the dam collapse, i.e. that because we don’t allow that crap into the air for EVERYONE to breathe, the dam breached and now an entire region is toxified.
Being a hillbilly myself, I often take a dim view of folks portraying us as idiots. Sometimes, however, I’m convinced we go a long way toward earning it.
December 28th, 2008 at 9:10 amWith a Katrina type response will this all end up in the Gulf mid-May?
December 28th, 2008 at 11:19 amtheswan, it’s already on its way. This affects everything from Chatanooga, TN to Huntsville, AL to The Shoals Area, AL and all the way to Paducah, KY and then south to the Mississippi Delta.
December 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pmBush doesn’t care about an environmental disaster. He’s looking forward to settling into his newly bought and paid for, 2 million dollar Dallas home. It must be nice Bush, since so many out there are losing their homes.
Good riddance, Worst-p(R)esident-Ever.
December 28th, 2008 at 1:23 pmI just read that the officials in TN and the EPA have said that this sludge is safe “as long as no one ingests it”. I think we should tell the residents to bypass the boiling the water that cannot be made mercury-free anyway and just “eat dirt (shit) and die”. This is a Katrina/FEMA/Exxon Valdez/lack of oversight and regulation epitaph for the administration that wants to kill the world. But this stuff should be really easy to drill through…baby.
December 28th, 2008 at 3:40 pm34. Just want to exapand your point a bit…. Companies usually store the toxins they generate into tailings ponds, landfills, and slurry injection sites. It is a very serious environmental issue, since, in many cases the ponds are not covered, so if there’s a heavy downpour the toxins can spill into the surrounding environment. Most often though, the toxins will leach into the ground, contaminating nearby aquifers if there are any.
It’s also a profound human rights issue, since mining operations (and other development) are so often located on indigenous peoples territory. In Canada, for example, industry has created at least 4,464 toxic sites as a result of ‘development’. That’s roughly 1.5 sites for every indigenous reserve. These sites usually contain arsenic, mercury, uranium, lead, and occasionally even “biological warfare agents” (according to the CA governments website). The effect this has had on indigenous people, particularly women and children, is too horrid to get into here, sufficed to say some are calling it “a form of passive ethnic cleansing”.
41. That’s funny. Coal plants generate up to 100 times more radiation then nuclear plants… a portion of that billows into the air, which means people have no choice but to ingest it (eg. it gets on the food at the dinner table), inhale it, bathe in it, and for kids to absorb it into their skin when they’re playing in the back yard. The key thing here is bio-accumulation. The only way to stop the toxic effect from getting worse is to move or to shut down the operation.
December 30th, 2008 at 12:02 pmSaturday, January 3, 2009, Nashville’s television station WSMV reported, “The TVA is hoping Mother Nature will help in the cleanup of that huge ash/water spill in East Tennessee. The utility begain spraying water and spreading grass seed around its Kingston fossil plant. The idea here is to cut down on the amount of dust and ash that flies up into the air and then errodes into the the water supply when it rains. More than a billion gallons of the sludge spilled…on December 22nd, covering some 300 acres of Roan County.”
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On Tuesday, December 30, Nashville’s television station WSMV reported “…Coal ash often becomes a radioactive substance; it can have a long-term effect if there is any radiation it, it will stay around for a long time, it will stay in the soil, in the water, in the area for a long time… ”
“…The engineer we talked to is an expert on the coal/sludge issues, he says that short-term there could actually be some impact on people’s health including rashes, kidney disease and neurological problems, and that’s just the short-term, the question is, will people suffer years from now…?”
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In the meantime, the TVA has increased its utility bills by an incredible amount, and this was before the coal/ash spill. Now the TVA is telling us that we may have to pay for the cleanup when they were clearly at fault for their negligence.
Thank you for continuing your reporting of this disaster. We’ve also been warned that other levees could quite possibly collapse with another substantial rainfall.
January 24th, 2009 at 12:51 am