CHATTANOOGA - Two years after a catastrophic coal ash spill at an East Tennessee power plant, some homeowners in Roane County say they are having respiratory problems, buying air filters and hosing away toxic-laden dust.
The Dec. 22, 2008 spill of 5.4 million cubic yards of toxin-laden sludge in the Emory River and on privately held land beside the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Plant has spurred some to join a protracted court fight.
Owners of more than 170 properties negotiated buyouts and have moved, with TVA's $1.2 billion cleanup continuing.
The Swan Pond community along the river is quieter, with only a scattering of holiday decorations in largely vacant neighborhoods.
TVA contends in court filings that dust from the ash spill at the Kingston Plant west of Knoxville is no more harmful than "dust from a ball field or farm land."
While the ash contains carcinogens and the Environmental Protection Agency described the spill as "one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind," the EPA is still struggling to decide if it should be regulated as hazardous.
The sludge covered 300 acres around the Kingston Plant, destroyed or damaged about two dozen homes and reached the Emory River that flows into Watts Bar Lake and the Tennessee River system.
Among some residents near the spill who are staying put, Sarah McCoin said she and others live with health fears and the unnerving nuisance of toxin-laden dust that continues to blow from TVA's $1.2 billion cleanup.
"First of all, there is not one single manager of TVA who lives were we live," McCoin said. "Who wants to move into a neighborhood where 90 percent of the homes are empty and are never going to be occupied?"
TVA has given the community a total of $43 million to spend on projects such as schools, sewage system upgrades and public relations aimed partly at attracting northern retirees to move in. Another $47 million has been spent buying up nearby properties and the utility has paid penalties totaling $11.5 million.
"We had a normal Fourth of July celebration here this past year," said Troy Beets, mayor of waterfront Kingston, which has a municipal water intake close to the spill. "Usage of the (Watts Bar) lake and all seem to be about what it was pre-spill."
He said tests have shown no excessive amounts of any health-threatening substances in the water.
"There are people who are fussing and complaining, including people who live 10 miles down the river who say they have been treated unfairly," said Beets, who is chairman of a foundation overseeing TVA's $43 million payout.
For McCoin and hundreds of other plaintiffs in federal lawsuits pending in Knoxville, a judge has already ruled that TVA as a government entity cannot be sued for punitive damages that punish for losses such as family heritage that have no defined value.
"That was a slap in the face," said the 55-year-old McCoin, a benefits consultant who owns a 40-acre section of a family farm passed down for nine generations.
McCoin, whose land is upstream - "about 1.5 miles as the crow flies" - from the spill. said her family is a victim of airborne pollution. She said there are community concerns about cancer from the exposure.
"We have horrible allergies and it is not allergies due to Tennessee flora," McCoin said. "We have constant raspy throats. I even had a $30,000 colt die and the necropsy said its lungs were filled. Is that the ash spill? No one knows."
McCoin said she frequently hoses the dust off her house and has been buying air filters since the coal dust was discovered inside her house in the Swan Pond community on the Emory River, less than two miles upstream from the spill.
McCoin said she asked TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore at a community meeting what residents affected by the spill should do about the dust.
"He said we are going to get people water sprinklers," McCoin said. "Well I said I need 40 acres worth."
She never got them.
TVA in court filings contends that environmental tests and medical surveys show the spill has caused no harm, that dredging of ash spilled in the river has been finished, with the sludge sent to an Alabama landfill, and that the spill and cleanup otherwise has not caused any problems for property owners that merits damage payouts.
TVA said plaintiffs "cannot recover based solely on marketplace fear or stigma," that there is no "legally protected interest" in recreational opportunities on affected waterways, no proof that the spill increased levels of airborne ash on their properties and no evidence that particles of arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury, selenium and zinc - all hazardous substances as defined by the Superfund law - "leached from the coal ash."
Several plaintiff attorneys declined comment about the case that is scheduled to go to trial in September.
TVA, the nation's largest public utility serving nearly 9 million consumers in seven states, funded independent health studies and individual exams for residents, and has promised to continue environmental monitoring.
Roane County Commissioner Randy Ellis, 34, said his parents finally agreed to sell their property directly across the river from the plant, his home for 28 years, to TVA,
He said they both have respiratory ailments that are possibly caused by exposure to the ash and others in the community may develop related health problems in the future.
Ellis said he also has concerns "about 20 years from now."
Ellis said he hopes much of the property sold by people who moved will be developed into areas for public access but TVA has not made a decision.
"It took our whole family history from us," Ellis said of his parents' move forced by the spill. "You can't put a price tag on that."