Personal Injury Law

Coal Ash Sludge Muddies Waters

It looks like I may be paying a visit to Tennessee. Numerous residents have asked me to come to the community for a meeting on the coal fly ash disaster around Knoxville, and I think I will be going.

I know the question on everyone's lips. What is coal fly ash, and why does it need to be contained? The folks around Knoxville are getting to know a lot more about coal fly ash than they ever wanted to learn.

Coal fly ash. It sounds like someone has been burning fly poop or airborne coal. But seriously, it is akin to the creosote that coated those chimneys and chimneysweep boys of Charles Dickens ancient London.

Fly ash comes from chimneys, specifically the chimneys of power plants. The collection point determines exactly what kind of ash it is. Fly ash apparently contains silicon dioxide and calcium oxide as well as trace concentrations of heavy metals. In other words, coal ash is nasty stuff to have floating around in your river, air, and drinking water.

Anyway, thanks to the failure of a containment retention wall at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant that's where it is. In the river. Spread out on the land.

The Clinch and Tennessee Rivers are affected. So the TVA is out there collecting "cenospheres." Cenospheres are apparently little floating balls of residue which according to this TVA publication "are useful in bowling balls, paint, concrete and epoxy" --just a partial list of ways fly ash in general is used. There are 3000 feet of skimmers in place to vacuum up this stuff and some other collection devices in the water. I don't think the sludge is only made up of cenospheres, so I wonder what they're doing to control the rest of it.

The TVA publishes data on Kingston's Fossil Emissions and water data .

The TVA does NOT publish data about that retention wall. (Or maybe they do, and I just don't know where it is. The TVA is welcome to let me know that information.) So I'd like to know why they were using retention ponds to store this stuff. (You may remember I have a history with retention ponds. Don't like 'em. Never will.)

Why does it need to be contained? Well, that's a moot point, isn't it? Since it is composed of heavy metals, and other nasty things. It is better contained than it is spread out over 300 acres thirty some-odd miles away from Knoxville. Truth is, I should speculate on some other questions. Like...

Why was that fly ash sitting around a retention pond rather than being immediately ported to some Portland Cement factory, or bowling ball maker? Was there some earthquake we don't know about? Why did the retention wall give way? How much trace metal is realistically dangerous, and how much trace metal and toxin is really there? Is it truly inert?

AP has already released an article talking about how the TVA won't have retention ponds on TVA property any longer. Better late than never, I suppose. (Does that mean It's moving to private property, that it's going to be sold or that they're shooting it to trash cans on Jupiter or Pluto?) We'll have to see what their actual solution is, and if it really is an improvement over what they're doing now.

A dozen families have lost their homes to 2.6 million cubic yards of fly ash. OR a Billion cubic yards. (The numbers change depending on whose saying them.) Three hundred acres are destroyed. In fact, that number has grown to four hundred acres six feet deep.

Why is it that it takes a disaster to find the better way to do things? When are we ever going to learn to use forethought instead of hindsight?

Full post as published by The Brockovich Report on December 30, 2008 (boomark / email).