He spent six years working on the clean-up effort and said he believes exposure to the coal ash made him sick. Tommy Johnson - like Bledsoe, the worker who compared the Kingston spill to the moon’s surface - was at the facility that day. “It was like a scene out of a horror movie.” The aftermath “was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Richard Moore, who served as the inspector general for the TVA at the time, 11 said. “It was like a scene out of a horror movie.” Video: Matthew Gannon/CNN, Photo: Will Lanzoni/CNN “The aftermath of (the) Kingston coal ash spill along the river was like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Richard Moore, who served as the inspector general for TVA during the spill, said. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which owned the plant, spent more than $1 billion over six years to clean up the spill. “You can’t see coal ash contaminating underlying groundwater (…) you can’t see the slow pollution of the adjacent river and the dying of the fish (…) It’s likely to be less dramatic.”Īfter 5.4 million cubic yards of coal ash spilled at the Kingston plant, 10 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designated the area as a Superfund site. “One could see the billowing black smoke,” Evans said. With the Clean Air Act, the nation traded one environmental problem for another, Evans, who works for Earthjustice, said. But 40 or fewer have a protective liner to contain the leftover ash, and more than 200 have been shown to contaminate groundwater with toxic substances at levels that exceed federal safety standards, the Earthjustice data shows. Because coal plants produce electricity by converting large volumes of water into steam, many of these waste sites are situated near river systems and flood zones. Hundreds of these sites now dot the country, according to data that federal regulations require pond operators to publish and was compiled by Earthjustice, a nonprofit that handles environmental lawsuits. The grass embankment behind these trees separates a coal ash pond from southern Alabama’s Mobile River. After Congress passed the Clean Air Act of 1970, which regulated power plants’ air emissions, some facilities began storing their coal ash in dirt ditches, commonly known today as ash ponds or surface impoundments. Most Americans had likely never heard of coal ash until three days before Christmas 2008, when the Kingston spill news broke.īefore the 1970s, many utilities pumped their coal ash into the atmosphere, attorney Lisa Evans, who has focused on coal ash litigation for more than 20 years, said. Matthew Gannon/CNN ‘Horror’ scene in Kingston The Mobile–Tensaw Delta, in southern Alabama, is one of the most biodiverse areas of the United States, with flora and fauna that exist nowhere else on Earth. “We’ve got an A-bomb up the river,” John Howard, who lives in Mobile County and said he has been fishing in southern Alabama for decades, said.
Environmentalists, community members and scientists fear the pond could someday unleash a Kingston-like catastrophe on southern Alabama and say leaving the coal ash in the delta is shortsighted and dangerous. But experts say it continues to pose a massive threat throughout the country.Ībout 400 miles southwest of Kingston, a coal ash lagoon - which holds almost four times as much sludge as what spilled in Tennessee - is sitting in the Mobile–Tensaw Delta, one of the most biodiverse areas of the United States, with flora and fauna not known to exist anywhere else on Earth. 6 7 8 9įor a time, the Kingston incident catapulted coal ash into the public consciousness. Studies have shown these contaminants are dangerous to humans and have linked some to cancer, lung disease and birth defects. 5 It contains metals - such as lead, mercury, chromium, selenium, cadmium and arsenic - that never biodegrade.
3 The clean-up took years and cost more than $1 billion.Ĭoal ash, an umbrella term for the residue that’s left over when utilities burn coal, 4 is one of the United States’ largest kinds of industrial waste. The ash blanketed up to 400 acres, killed hundreds of fish, 2 damaged more than a dozen homes and polluted nearby waterways. 1 The spill was an environmental calamity, and the fallout was immediate. Hours earlier, an embankment at the plant had ruptured, flooding the area with gray muck. It looked like the surface of the moon, he recalled. He arrived at a shocking sight: A mountain of coal ash covering the road and a set of railroad tracks. It was his supervisor telling him to come in.īledsoe dressed and drove an hour to the power plant, near Kingston, Tennessee, where he worked. A predawn phone call woke Ron Bledsoe with a jolt.
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