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When Coal Ash Attacks: A TVA Production Print E-mail
Written by Leslie Berliant   
Monday, 29 December 2008

The Kingston, Tennessee area did not have the merriest of Christmas last week. As you may have heard, a breach in the wall of a giant retention pond holding back 80 acres of Coal ash and slurry from a nearby coal plant sent 500 million gallons of toxic waste spilling into the surrounding area.

So far, 15 homes in Harriman, Tennessee have been reported damaged and one man injured when his house was knocked off its foundation. Power lines were toppled and the waste also spilled into the Clinch River, a tributary to the Tennessee River which is the water supply for Chattanooga and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky.

Clean up could take years, according to Greenpeace, and the damage to wildlife, ecosystems and the surrounding residents could be massive. Greenpeace is calling for a criminal investigation into the failure of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to prevent the spill.

TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Video footage showed sludge as high as 6 feet, burying porches and garage doors. The slide also downed nearby power lines, though the TVA said power had been restored to the area.

Neighbors had noticed earlier, smaller breaches at the 1960's area ash pond at the coal plant, according to The Tennessean, but nothing of this magnitude.

"This spill shows that coal can never be 'clean,'" said Kate Smolski, Senior Legislative Coordinator for Greenpeace. "If the Exxon Valdez was a symbol of pollution 20 years ago, the Tennessee Coal Spill of 2008 is the symbol of it today."

The NRDC reports that long term effects of the spill will be bad, including contamination of ground water because coal ash "is loaded with toxic metals and other hazardous substances," including arsenic, mercury, chromium and cadmium, all of which can damage organs and the nervous system. These contaminants are particularly dangerous for children, even without a disaster like the recent one. Yet fly ash is not currently regulated by the EPA as a hazardous waste, though they have been considering changing that.

"The really sad thing about this spill is that it’s only a small example of the damage coal causes," Smolski added. "Add in global warming, tens of thousands of annual premature deaths from power plant pollution, and hundreds of mountains leveled across Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia, and that's the real picture of coal."

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