Could Toxic Spill Be Warning Sign?

CBS Evening News: Congress Grills TVA About Massive Ash Spill; Ominous Warning About Similar Unregulated Ash Ponds

(CBS)  In a landscape so blackened, so altered by a billion gallons of spilled coal ash, Crystelle Flinn tells CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann she can only guess where her house once stood.

"Heartbreaking," she said. "It's heartbreaking."

Thursday she watched a bulldozer knock down her former home's ruins.

What's the most heartbreaking part of it for her?

"Knowing that the property and the land will never be the same," Flinn said.

On Thursday in Washington, a U.S. Senate committee grilled Tom Kilgore, the CEO of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

"You've got to clean up your act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "Literally."

Three days before Christmas, a retention pond collapsed outside a TVA coal-burning power plant in Kingston.

TVA officials knew the pond had problems - but in 2003, rejected a $25 million overhaul.

"The most expensive solution wasn’t chosen," said Kilgore. "And obviously, that looks bad for us."

The falling mountain of ash overwhelmed everything in its path - after a wall that was two-thirds of a mile across burst at the retention pond.

The federal government doesn't regulate such coast ash ponds. Neither does the state of Tennessee. The TVA has been policing itself.

In many states, it's no different.

It's estimated there are 280 wet coal ash ponds throughout America, like one outside Pittsburgh. It covers 130 acres, 30 times the size of the TVA Kingston pond.

Many of these ponds are unregulated by anyone.

In the shadow of the Tennessee plant, the Murphy family worries: will the river in their backyard ever be safe to swim again?

"I mean, we're less than a mile from the actual spill," said Jill Murphy. "How do they know what is safe?"

This cleanup could cost ten times more than the pond overhaul the TVA once rejected.

"They still took the cheap way out and it cost us our present, some of our past and a lot of our future," Flinn said.

It's a future that now includes a push for federal regulation.

"I assumed a lot that I shouldn't have assumed. Those days are over," Boxer said.

One thing's not over - the cleanup of the toxic ash. It will go on for months.

[eggy1620]

Government now hiring . . . coal ash pond inspectors. No experience necessary since no experience exists. Wallow up to the trough of public service!

[clathrate]

Another scare story, unfortunate but hardly an end of the world problem. Fly ash is about as dangerous as sand. A little information the alleged "journalist" should have provided......

Posted by louiville2 at 09:23 AM : Jan 09, 2009

Well, except for the fact that your "information" is completely wrong. Fly ash is anything but harmless. It contains levels of mercury, arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals that are not safe whatsoever. then again, maybe you enjoy getting bladder cancer and CNS disorders.

Fly ash can only be safely contained if it is used as a pozzolan in concrete or if vitrified, both of which are not cheap. Other than that, it''s just a public health menace.

[lewiston14]

"'''' .. they come to collect the taxes every year, the bus comes by several times a night"

Morph my first offical post to you. NOBODY is collecting a cent from me. Not in over 10 years.

[lewiston14]

Coal is in our future for a very long time to come same as the oil sands in Canada. Between both of us we have more energy them most of the world. Your little green electric are a nice idea but not at $60,000. What fool would buy one except the rich who just want to show off to their friends. Why do you need a 4 cylinder super charged gas engine to run a generator to keep it going after 40 miles? I make 5000 watts with a 10 HP single cylinder engine. I might not be able to go 60 MPH but it would get me home. You don%u2019t need to go from 0 to 60 in 3.2 seconds in your little green car. They are getting this all wrong. 40 miles with enough back up to get you home for less then $15,000 is green. If companies or dealers think they are going to sell $60,000 little green cars they are in for a real shock. They can not even sell what they got in their lots.

[lewiston14]

louiville2: Thanks for the list of uses this coal ash could be used for. I never knew there were so many. Now we have to get the teamsters and unions to agree to use it. It took million of years to make so it had to have some value after the fact.. L

This is green that is a good idea.

[bobbyduck1]

Another scare story, unfortunate but hardly an end of the world problem. Fly ash is about as dangerous as sand. A little information the alleged "journalist" should have provided......

Posted by louiville2 at 09:23 AM : Jan 09, 2009

No doubt the folks who just got their houses buried and bulldozed might disagree with your assessment. If you could see past your local economic concerns and just for a second take a world view, you might have to acknowledge how serious this is.

280 unregulated ticking time bombs spread across America, some that dwarf the one that just ruined the lives of these folks, and you advocate burying our heads in the sand.....

Sine the fly ash is so harmless, you should trade your property with one of the families that just got theirs swamped "harmless sand". Then they could live their lives again and you could build a luxury home on your new beach!

[wdrussell1]

You turn your watchdogs into lapdogs and you pay the price.
Take off the muzzles and let their teeth show again.

[lewiston14]

What my problem is the use of the words of and or. It might be because the f and r keys are next to each other but I rather think it is just sloppy proof reading on my part but in a forum it dont count to much so ill ta 2 U latr

[lewiston14]

Electric? Is that similar to electricity?

Posted by Evian_Ycnan

Yes Evian in a way you are correct but because you thought of this I checked last months bill. From the name on the header to the entire bill itself the word electric is used. The word elecricity is nowhere to be found so my choice of term could be looked at as correct.

[louiville2]

Another scare story, unfortunate but hardly an end of the world problem. Fly ash is about as dangerous as sand. A little information the alleged "journalist" should have provided.

"The reuse of fly ash as an engineering material primarily stems from its pozzolanic nature, spherical shape, and relative uniformity. Fly ash recycling, in descending frequency, includes usage in:

* Portland cement and grout
* Embankments and structural fill
* Waste stabilization and solidification
* Raw feed for cement clinkers
* Mine reclamation
* Stabilization of soft soils
* Road subbase
* Aggregate
* Flowable fill
* Mineral filler in asphaltic concrete
* Other applications include cellular concrete, geopolymers, roofing tiles, paints, metal castings, and filler in wood and plastic products."

[louiville2]

Another example of Al Gores don''t do as we do, do as we say.

"Despite widespread coverage of Gore''s cinematic debut, however, the press has declined to mention a few inconvenient truths about the ex-veep''s own environmental record.

One of the most glaring tidbits, for instance, is the pollution Gore and his family caused by maintaining their own toxic waste dump on their farm in Carthage, Tennessee."

[ahrats]

the TVA was created by the Federal government and if the govenment can''t regulate its own how can you expect private businesses to keep these retention ponds in shape. Look for more diasters in the future, more bridges to fall down and more peoples lives to be runied.

[evian_ycnan]

Posted by lewiston14 at 04:55 AM : Jan 09, 2009

Electric? Is that similar to electricity?

If half the research dollars went into solar voltaic cell technology that went in to raising wood on 70-year old men, each of our houses could produce enough 99.999% clean electricity to power our own houses and two electric-powered automobiles.

When corporate America figures a way to charge you for the energy that falls freely on your house, this toxic sludge will be as much a thing of the past as a dinosaur.

[lewiston14]

Question: Do you want electric of not? Do you want a cold dark house of not? Electric runs just about everything you have. Your furnace, your microwave, your frig. Want to charge your cell phone or even complain on CBS without electric it is not going to happen. There is no such thing as green coal if there was your electric bill would be $3000 a month and the ash has to go somewhere. Use it for road construction Thats not a bad idea living near a power plant is not a good idea. Make it more expensive for a power plant to make electric and guess who ends up paying the tab you do. Green is almost a joke. If you took all the green in the world and added it up it might provide a single hour a year of the worlds power needs. Not saying green is bad just 50 or more years away and in those 50 years energy needs will triple.

[sis003]

Does anyone know how Mr. Bush''s midnight laws and changes might have changed the regulation of the coal industry? Do you recall McCain using coal industry regulation as a campaign play against Obama? I am pretty sure I read that Mr. Bush has removed some of the coal industry regulations.

[yongamerica]

They keep calling it a retention pond. But with it holding more liquid that a super oil tanker, 40 olympic sized swimming pools, shouldn''t it be called a retention lake?

What kept all these heavy metals from leaching out of this Huge Lake of sludge to begin with?

[dsjones26]

We need to attack these CEO in their bedrooms and haul them out in the dead of night and string them up in front of their families. We do that enough times these corporate SOB will never mess with us ever again. I want to SOB to be terrified to ever cross us. We tried to play by the rules, but guess what these jokers bought off the judges, DA, cops Bush Admin and did what ever they wanted to do. Now they are going to charge us ratepayer to fix their mess. Anyone got the rope?

[kpmo1]

In reading about the Kingston spill and others before it I came across a documentary "Kilowatt Ours: A Plan to Re-Energize America" that discusses some of the disastrous consequences of coal mining and the storage of the resulting ash. The sad thing is that these spills have happened before, yet it seems we are not learning from them...

According to the documentary: Over 8 years ago a spill like this happened in 2000 in Martin County, KY. A coal slurry retention pond broke spilling some 300 million gallons of sludge into the nearby Big Sandy River - that''s 30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, one of the biggest man-made ecological disasters in history. The Kingston spill is estimated to be more than 1.1 billion gallons, about 4 times the size of the Martin County spill.

You can watch it online at www.kilowattours.org

[claydowner]

I agree with Senator Boxer that these clowns need to clean up there act. This is a disgrace. We must have heavy regulation of our coal plants so that waste material does not contaminate the environment. Every coal plant needs to be inspected and required to put in the very latest scrubber and environmental technology to reduce sulfur, particulate, and other types of emissions. If they do not want to do this then shut the *** things down. I wish we had Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle IGCC technology that captures CO2. The toxic waste from this site should have been more carefully controlled by the TVA. At least the trying to clean it up but can anyone drink the water?

Episodes like this just underscore the fact that as a country we should go towards wind, solar, and geothermal energy sources backed up by natural gas plants as a matter of public policy. We need a huge investment program that builds up these forms of energy. We should heavily tax carbon emitters like coal plants. Yesterday''s technology is not going to solve 21st century problems.