TVA says ash-laden sludge was no threat to the environment? No threat to drinking water?

[madfloridian]

That reminds me of when they said there was no air pollution from 9/11. It reminds of the times here in Florida that phosphate company spills dumped pollutants in to the Alafia and Peace Rivers...and they said no harm done.

1st tests: Water safe after Tennessee ash deluge


An aerial view shows workers standing near a home that was destroyed when a retention pond wall collapsed at the Tennessee Valley Authorities Kingston Fossil Plant, Monday, Dec. 22, 2008 in Harriman, Tenn. The Tennessee Valley Authority says the 40-acre pond held a slurry of ash generated by the coal-burning Kingston Steam Plant.
(AP Photo/Wade Payne)

HARRIMAN, Tenn. – Environmentalists worry the ash-laden sludge that coated a Tennessee neighborhood when a power plant dike burst could pose a health risk, although initial tests by a public utility company have shown no threat to drinking water.

Crews were expected to work through the holiday weekend to contain the aftermath of Monday's breach at the coal-fired Kingston power plant, run by the nation's largest public utility about 50 miles west of Knoxville.

Officials at the Tennessee Valley Authority have said preliminary tests suggest there is no danger to millions of people who get their drinking water from the 652-mile Tennessee River. A TVA news release Wednesday also said there was no threat to the environment from the breach at the plant near Harriman along the Emory River, which joins the Clinch River and flows into the main Tennessee River.

However, environmentalists have blasted TVA for what they say was something completely avoidable. Hundreds of fish were floating dead downstream from the plant Tuesday, and state and federal agencies have yet to complete water quality testing. Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman Laura Niles said some toxic metals could be in the muck, including mercury and arsenic. Lisa Evans, a Massachusetts attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice, said similar spills have happened in Pennsylvania and Georgia and blamed the industry and lack of federal regulation.

J. MILES CARY / KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL

The aftermath of a retention wall collapse is seen Monday in Harriman, Tenn. A retention pond wall collapsed early Monday morning at a power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility, releasing a frigid mix of water and ash that flooded 15 homes nearby.

Here is rough video from the spill, and another write up about it.

Video in DU videos about the TVA spill.

According to local news reports millions of yards of ashy toxic sludge broke through a dike at TVA's Kingston coal-fired plant Monday, covering hundreds of acres, knocking one home off its foundation. Coal ash can carry toxic substances that include mercury, arsenic and lead, according to a federal study.

Greenpeace is calling today for there to be a criminal investigation into the matter. "Every facility like this is supposed to have a spill contingency plan to prevent this kind of disaster," said Rick Hind, Greenpeace Legislative Director.

No environmental damage?

[bahrbearian]

1. The new water filter for the 21st Century.Fly Ash.

[elehhhhna]

2. "in terms of toxicity, until an analysis comes in, you can't call it toxic." ...

One environmental attorney called that statement "irresponsible." The ash that gives sludge its thick, pudding-like consistency in this case is known as fly ash, which results from the combustion of coal.

Fly ash contains concentrated amounts of mercury, arsenic and benzine, said Chandra Taylor, staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/23/tennessee.sludge.spill/?iref=mpstoryview

[jwirr]

3. While this is bad news for the people in Tennessee it is also the

Chernobyl for the coal companies. Hopefully all those planning to build new plants will take note.

[bullimiami]

4. isnt it funny that 2 threads under this one there was a clean coal ad.

i dont have a problem with du getting what advertising comes along but doesnt it seem like a waste to try to sway us?

[madfloridian]

5. I just did a search for images of the event.

So far just those two.

You would think there would be more.

[FloriTexan]

21. Did you look on Flickr or Webshots...

You probably did as your research skills are far more advanced than my own :+

[madfloridian]

27. Nope, I forgot to look there.

:D

[Muttocracy]

6. hmmm. hope they keep checking the water often...

on edit - story just came on NPR news right now.

[madfloridian]

7. What was their opinion on the dangers to the environment?

I missed it.

[Muttocracy]

8. here's the link - interview with a local woman

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98711182

"the health effects are a question in your mind" - local woman whose husband made the first 911 call "I don't see how are they going to clean this up"

[madfloridian]

20. Thanks for the NPR link.

Checking it out.

[gratuitous]

22. They're checking the water every day

And upstream from the spill, everything seems just fine! Nothing to worry about there. Just think of this as another little industrial experiment, like Libby Montana.

[madfloridian]

23. Libby, Montana. Read the articles linked from this site.

http://www.scn.org/~bh162/asbestos_libby.html

What a tragic case.

From one of your links:

"U.S. Senator Conrad Burns is used to getting a pretty warm reception when he travels to the small towns and rural areas across the very large state he represents. Montana's Republican junior senator is a rancher. He is unabashedly conservative, and so, in large part, is his constituency. He once made a racial joke in Bozeman (about the trials of living in Washington D. C., among so many blacks, only he didn't say "blacks"), and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle had the effrontery to publish it. His approval rating actually went up a couple points statewide.

When he came to Libby, campaigning for reelection in the fall of 2000, the Lincoln County GOP put on a gala reception for him at the VFW. But at one table a less festive group that included Les and Norita Skramstad, Gayla and Dave Benefield and Bob and Carrie Dedrick waited quietly to talk to Burns about the issue they cared about most - asbestos. Finally, Burns came out of the back room at the club, where he was meeting with local Republican officials and sat down at the table. Immediately Carrie Dedrick began asking him to help the victims in Libby. At that, Burns did not respond to Carrie, but instead looked directly across the table at Gayla. He shook a big finger in her face, and said, "Little Lady, when you stop tearing me down is when I start doing something to help the people of Libby."

Gayla got her own finger - "The pointer, honestly," she would say later - wagging right back in the senator's face. She replied, "Sir, I have not been on your ass or on TV talking about this, for six months, and you have done nothing in those six months, so don't try to use that as an excuse."

Burns tried another tack, telling the group that he had gotten W. R. Grace & Company to provide millions for medical screening. In the same firm, polite voice, Gayla said, "You are mistaken. Grace is not paying for the screening. Our tax dollars are."

At that point, Senator Burns decided to cut his losses, and got up and walked out of the room. Les Skramstad had gotten up from the table earlier, and just happened to be standing quietly nearby when Burns came through the door and growled to an aid, "I had to come all the way here to put up with this shit?"

http://www.scn.org/~bh162/burns3.html

[Orwellian_Ghost]

9. 48 Times the Size of Exxon Valdez Spill

Environmental Spill Disaster Devastates Tennessee; 48 Times the Size of Exxon Valdez

By Matthew McDermott, TreeHugger. Posted December 25, 2008.

Approximately 500 million gallons of coal ash sludge has broken through a holding pond at a coal-fired plant.

The video below is a shocking helicopter-level view of the immense coal ash sludge spill in Tennessee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGmVCABMRRQ

An environmental disaster of epic proportions has occurred in Tennessee. Monday night, 2.6 million cubic yards (the equivalent of 525.2 million gallons, 48 times more than the Exxon Valdez spill by volume) of coal ash sludge broke through a dike of a 40-acre holding pond at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant covering 400 acres up to six feet deep, damaging 12 homes and wrecking a train.

<snip>

Toxic Sludge Got Into Tributary of Chattanooga Water Supply

Apart from the immediate physical damage, the issue is what toxic substances are in that sludge: Mercury, arsenic, lead, beryllium, cadmium. Though officials said the amounts of these poisons in the sludge could not be determined on Monday, they could (at the mild end) irritate skin or trigger allergies or (longer term) cause cancer or neurological problems.

This toxic sludge got into the Emory River, a tributary of the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers: The water supply for Chattanooga, Tennessee as well as millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. TVA says that as yet the spill (which they are characterizing as a mudslide or landslide, but frankly it's still toxic…) has not affected the water quality in the Emory River.

<snip>

Clean Coal, Yeah Right

As many people in the blog world are noting, it's this sort of thing that really makes the proposition of clean coal so absurd. Even if you can scrub all the CO2 out of it, you still have so many other toxic waste products associated with burning coal that have to be stored that carbon emissions are just a part of the problem. How many other holding ponds are out there waiting to burst?

http://www.alternet.org/story/115323/environmental_spill_disaster_devastates_tennessee%3B_48_times_the_size_of_exxon_valdez/

[G_j]

10. Tennessee coal sludge disaster ‘shows that the term clean coal is an oxymoron.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4715753&mesg_id=4715753

Tennessee coal sludge disaster ‘shows that the term clean coal is an oxymoron

Monday, more than 500 million gallons of toxic coal sludge burst through a retention wall in eastern Tennessee, causing massive property and environmental damage and leaving residents holding their breath over possible long-term consequences. Environmentalists said the spill was more than 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The incident underscored the false nature of the “clean coal” propaganda. In an interview with NBC Nightly News, Elliott Negin of the Union of Concerned Scientists explained:

This disaster shows that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron. It’s akin to saying ‘safe cigarette.’ Clean coal doesn’t exist.

Watch,
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/24/tn-sludge-disaster/


**thanks for the underreported information madfloridian !

[BrklynLiberal]

11. More info and pictures here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3659318

[madfloridian]

12. Thanks for the link.

:hi:

[Karenina]

13. Nothing to see here! Please, move along now.

We're ALL being POISONED by capitalist jackasses. A little bit here, a big bit there...

[PufPuf23]

14. The heavy metals in solution will bind in soil because of

valence and bio-accumulate in the food chain.

[madfloridian]

17. There is no way in hell this is "safe", and the TVA should not say so.

That's awful they do.

[madfloridian]

18. Dupe...deleted.

[Muttocracy]

15. another story in LBN on the ash content and extent

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3660107

[madfloridian]

19. Thanks I missed that.

Heading to read it tomorrow am.

[madfloridian]

16. Close-up picture of flooded home....article

A Tennessee Valley Authority employee surveyed damage caused by the Monday failure of a retention pond. (J. Miles Cary/knoxville news sentinel/Associated Press)

Article from Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/12/27/tenn_ash_spill_larger_than_thought/

[onethatcares]

24. Let the spokesperson for the TVA take a big heaping glass of it.

gulp,gulp, gulp, right down the old pipes to prove it's safe. Right in front of the cameras, no hiding, a dip and a sip and they have to stand around for at least a half hour in front of the cameras.

edit to add: not to take a cup of the sludge, but a cup of the water from the springs the sludge has poisoned, shouldn't be too hard to do.

[DRoseDARs]

25. Erin Brockovich had the perfect response to that...

Might have been just a scene added for the movie or based on a real incident, but when she and her boss met with the company lawyers they where suing, their firm provided water for the meeting. Only after the lawyers had had some of it did she inform them where the water came from: The polluted groundwater the company was polluting. Oh snap.

[ejpoeta]

26. i kind of had to laugh when they were saying those on well water

shouldn't drink the water. i can damn sure bet that anyone with well water would have stopped drinking the water as soon as they saw that mess. like anyone is going to listen to the people who friggin caused this mess. of course they are going to say it's safe. pay no attention to all the dead fish washing up on shore. i'd laugh if it wasn't so frightening!! i mean, the pollution of our water supplies is staggering. it's not like we NEED water to survive. it's not like the crap we do to our own ecosystem and food and water supplies isn't going to be our destruction! the dinosaurs were brought down by an asteroid hitting the earth and screwing up the dinosaur's ecosystem and environment. who needs an asteroid! seems we are doing a bang up job of that all by ourselves!

[Orwellian_Ghost]

28. Bumping this

n/t

[Kalyke]

29. A representative of the residents was on the radio this morning

and she said they were sending core samples off to a private firm to test.

Apparently, there has been some on-going disputes between the residents and TVA over this particular coal ash yard. They have caught them lying about carcinogen levels before.

[quidam56]

30. They say the Bush Legacy will be...

He kept us safe from terrorist attacks since 9/11. http://www.wisecountyissues.com This is TOXIC TERRORISM ! Hannity's America sure ain't My America.