The Tennessee Valley Authority has removed one third of the coal ash dumped into the Emory River from its Kingston Fossil Plant, officials said today.

TVA President Tom Kilgore said today that work crews have excavated 1 million cubic yards of ash that spilled last December into the river beside the Kingston coal plant. So far, 580,000 cubic yards of the ash has been shipped to a lined landfill in Perry County, Ala.

Mr. Kilgore said the ash removal from the river — scheduled to be complete by next spring — is the first phase of a multi-billion-dollar program TVA is undergoing to become a leader in the utility industry in coal ash disposal.

“Since we had the biggest accident with coal ash in the industry, I want to have the best cleanup program of any utility,” Mr. Kilgore told reporters during an update today on the Kingston coal ash cleanup.

TVA has spent nearly $230 million this year to clean up the Kingston ash spill, TVA Vice President Anda Ray said. The utility projects it will spend up to $1.2 billion to clean up the Kingston spill and from $1.5 billion to $2 billion over the next eight years to convert five other wet ash storage plants to dry ash storage systems.