Topic: Kingston Fossil Plant Spill

Around 1 a.m. on December 22, 2008 a dike ruptured at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Fossil Plant in Roane County, TN, just across the river from the city of Kingston. The dike was part of a solid waste impoundment holding coal fly ash slurry, the leftover ash from coal that cannot be burned at power plants. This ash used to be released into the atmosphere, but for environmental concerns it is now collected and held in large quantities, a better but still dangerous alternative.

When this impoundment breached, 1.1 billion gallons of the waste poured out, covering around 300 acres of surrounding land and poisoning the Emory River, killing most aquatic life. The mudflow covered 12 homes, destroying one, rendering 3 uninhabitable, and damaging 42 total residential properties. Furthermore, a major gas line was ruptured, a rail line was covered, trees were knocked down, power lines were destroyed, and a water main was broken. Luckily no one was injured, but the cleanup process could take close to $1 billion to complete, and by last summer only 3% of the spill had be cleaned. Many say that this accident should have been prevented, as leaks had been reported nearly every year leading up to the incident, and as close as 2 months prior to it. Despite these warnings significant action to prevent such a spill was not taken, and the result was the worst of its kind in the US by far, and as some call it, the worst man-made environmental disaster since Chernobyl.

I plan on visiting this location to see if any visible contamination remains to be photographed.


< This photograph was taken one mile from the where the spill started.











Information and imagery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill