Staff Photo by Patrick Smith Workers continue to remove the coal fly ash sediment covering over 300 acres near Harriman, Tenn. TVA has covered the sludge with grass seed, fertilizer and straw blanket the Swan Pond Circle Road area after TVA's Dec. 22 coal fly ash spill.
An independent report on water, sediment and fish samples collected after the Dec. 22 Kingston Fossil Plant ash spill shows high toxin levels and a fish population at the toxic “tipping point” of losing reproductive ability.
The report estimates the ash sludge contains 3,380 tons of the 10 most toxic elements in fly ash.
“Overall, these test results indicate much more severe impacts to water, sediment and fish than has been previously reported by TVA, which tells us they haven’t been sampling in the right places,” said Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby of Appalachian Voices, an environmental organization based in Boone, N.C.
Scientists with Appalachian State University, Wake Forest University, the Tennessee Aquarium and Appalachian Voices released the study Monday online and in a telephone conference call.
Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman Gil Francis said agency officials are reviewing the report.
“Early on we got data from some of these folks and we said, ‘Show us where you are collecting this so we can go back and make sure we haven’t missed anything,’” he said.
Mr. Francis said the agency has “numerous studies in progress to make sure we understand all the issues.”
“We’ll put that information out there as soon as we get it available,” he said.
WHAT’S IN THE WATER
Study findings in the river water at the spill site:
Arsenic — 260 times the drinking water standard
Barium — 3.65 times the drinking water standard
Cadmium — 3 times the drinking water standard
Lead — 16 times the drinking water standard
Selenium — 1.9 times the Tennessee acute aquatic life criteria and 7.6 times the Tennessee chronic aquatic life criteria
Source: Preliminary Summary Report, Appalachian State University, Appalachian Voices, Tennessee Aquarium and Wake Forest University
The TVA’s 60-foot-high ash landfill in Kingston broke open three days before Christmas 2008 and dumped 1.1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge into the Emory River and over 300 acres of residential farm land.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced last week it is assuming regulatory oversight of the cleanup but did not respond Monday to requests for comment on the independent study results.
TVA officials have said the ash is nonhazardous and that the agency is cleaning up the spilled material.
FISH REPRODUCTION
University scientists said they expect the toxicity levels — particularly of selenium — to rise, especially with the dredging the agency recently began. The study states additional intake of selenium severely could affect fish reproduction.
Fish reproductive systems soon likely could be so damaged from the toxic levels of selenium that their eggs and young will die, and their population eventually will be eliminated, said Dr. Dennis Lemly, adjunct professor of biology at Wake Forest University.
The report states selenium concentrations in fish species in the Emory River are “at toxic thresholds.”
“This means that the river ecosystem cannot tolerate further assimilation of selenium from the ash spill,” the report states. “There is no margin of safety.”
Dr. Lemly said findings of such high levels indicate the landfill had been leaking before the December breach.
“If we started with a clean ecosystem and started to put selenium in and let it bioaccumulate into fish tissues, we’d expect it to take 30 days for that to happen,” Dr. Lemly said. “What we saw in the fish in the Emory River is that those fish were already contaminated by selenium to toxic threshold concentrations at only 18 days following the spill.”
He said there is an implication “for public health as well,” because selenium bioaccumulates up the food chain. The professor noted fish consumption warnings already exist on the river because of PCB and mercury levels.
arsenic concerns
The study also found lead oxides and high arsenic levels on 10 percent of the site’s samples of cenospheres — particles of filmy silica seen floating on the surface of water when released from the ash. TVA officials have said the cenospheres were inert.
Dr. Shea Tuberty, associate professor of biology at Appalachian State, said the cenospheres were coated with iron oxides, which collect and bind to arsenic and other toxins. Arsenic was not present on the cenospheres that were not coated with iron oxides, he said.
“It is likely that arsenic is not the only heavy metal that adheres to the iron oxide coating on the ash particle, but further study is necessary to confirm this,” the report states.
Ms. Lisenby and Dr. Tuberty said the research group has taken new and more intense water and fish samplings for a study it expects to release in June.
In those samplings they took water and sediment samples from three levels in the water, as well as a bank-to-bank sampling.
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This is nothing new for Kingston. I write from personal experience. Oak Ridge sits upstream, on the Clinch River above Kingston, Tennessee. During the 1940's and even afterward many toms of mercury and other toxic metals were spilled into the Clinch River from Oak Ridge nuclear plants. SEE
< http://www.downwinders.org-slavinhtml.ht... > for an official accounting. The human effect of the toxic spill and the GOVERNMENTS subsequent low key approach to news of the danger has already resulted in two horrible cancer cases that I know of. Both men lived on or near the Clinch River and frequently fished it. They both ate a lot of Clinch River fish in the 1960's. Both men came down with incredibly invasive hypernephromas, or kidney cancers, in their 50's.
My fellow Roane County Yellow Jacket teammate initially presented with shortness of breath and fatigue. His cancer had invaded the renal vein and extended all the way up to his inferior vena cava, were it was shutting off venous return to his heart. It was literally plugging up his pump.
It is a tribute to the great strength of this man that he survived the surgery at Vanderbilt and lived past their 5 year projection. He went hunting, which he loved, as much as he possibly could in his last few good years.
Years from now some people downstream from the Kingston power plant spill will have their lives cut short because of TVA's release of heavy metals into the Tennessee River system. Both my old friends and myself graduated from R.C.H.S. in 1969. I would like to know if kidney cancer has afflicted any other of my classmates. I think everyone growing up and fishing downstream from Oak Ridge ought to have their kidneys evaluated by ultrasound......at government expense.
As a postscript: I have learned that my old teammate was still living last December when the Kingston fly ash spill ruined his home, situated below the broken dam, metaphorically throwing dirt in the face of a dying man. He had lived just long enough to see all that he had worked for, to leave to his wife and son, destroyed.
Should the citizens of Chattanooga expect a 'for profit' company charged with collecting our drinking water from the Tennessee River, processing it to "standards", and delivering it to us, to take our very best interests to heart?
Some of the reservoirs up the Tennessee River from Chattanooga are piling up toxic sludge against the front side of their dams, surely increasing the levels of toxic metals and molecules, like PCB, passed down the river to us.
We are all part of a vastly interconnected web. What happened in Kingston yesterday will ultimately find its way down river into every glass of water we drink.
Here is a working link for the website attached above. Sorry for any inconvenience.
<http://www.downwinders.org/slavinhtml.ht...>