Cleanup from TVA Coal Ash Disaster Breaks New Ground
As John Kammeyer, P.E., Tennessee Valley Authority's vice president for coal combustion, drove up to the TVA's Kingston coal electricity plant at 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 23, 2008, and “saw all that crap across the road”—to be specific, 5.4 million cu yd of coal ash from the plant's ash pond—Kammeyer knew at once there had been an engineering failure.
“I had never seen anything like that before,” he says of the wet coal ash that poured out of a failed dike the night before, filling the Emory River and nearby ponds, covering roads and railroads, and spoiling 300 acres of land around the plant with ash residue.