Eight years after a coal ash pond ruptured at TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant in one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters, the Tennessee Valley Authority continues to face claims of improper disposal of coal residues from its coal-fired power plants.
A federal judge in Nashville will begin hearing arguments today in a civil lawsuit filed by environmental groups that charge TVA’s coal ash ponds at the Gallatin Fossil Plant northeast of Nashville are leaking toxic metals into the Cumberland River in violation of clean water regulations.
TVA, which is moving to replace all of its coal ash ponds with dry ash storage, denies the old ponds at the plant violate federal regulations, noting that the disposal methods were approved by environmental regulators in the past.
But the Southern Environment Law Center is representing the Tennessee Scenic Rivers Association, which together with the Tennessee Clean Water Network, claims coal ash is leaking into nearby water supplies through sinkholes from the unlined ponds where TVA has dumped coal residues for nearly 60 years.
“Because of the highly permeable, karst nature of the bedrock underlying the coal ash disposal pits at the Gallatin Fossil Plant, the lack of a liner underneath the coal ash, and the hydrology of the site, the only effective remedy to stop the pollution is the excavation and removal of the coal ash to lined storage safely away from the water bodies,” SELC attorney Jonathan Gendzier argues in one of many documents filed in the 2-year-old case.