Did TVA Miss Danger Signs That Could Have Avoided Spill?
Cleanup of the worst spill of its kind the history of the United States continues this week in east Tennessee, where an earthen retention wall at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston coal plant failed on Dec. 22 and covered 300 acres with 5.4 million cubic yards and water—or more than one billion gallons—of a sludge-like byproduct of coal combustion called fly ash.
The sludge came from a 40-acre waste pond, one of three at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant, a coal-fired plant about 40 miles west of Knoxville in Roane County, Tenn., near the Clinch, Emory and Tennessee rivers. No one was seriously injured, but the initial spill, called “a tidal wave” by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, destroyed three homes and ruptured a major gas line.