Staff photo by Dan Henry/Chattanooga Times Free Press – Mark Greer, left, and Greg Schwartz take water samples at the site where an overnight leak formed at the Kingston fossil plant’s Gypsum pond, leaking contaminated water into the Clinch River in Harriman, Tenn.HARRIMAN, Tenn. — TVA workers still were trying to stop a leak in a new gypsum pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant on Thursday.
Officials said “a quarter-sized” fissure in the side wall of the Tennessee Valley Authority pond was allowing the pond water — potentially contaminated with gypsum solids and low-level mercury — to travel 100 to 150 feet beneath the wall embankment to bubble into the edge of the Clinch River.
The gypsum pond leak comes just a week shy of the second anniversary of TVA’s worst environmental disaster, when a coal ash pond at Kingston collapsed and spilled more than 5.4 million cubic yards of ash onto 300 acres of a rural neighborhood and the Emory River. TVA is about half-way through the cleanup and expects the bill to be up to $1.2 billion.
The two ponds are about a mile apart and contain different wastes.
Although work to contain the newest break already had slowed the gypsum pond leak, workers told the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Craig Zeller that they will be conducting dye tests to track the leak or leaks. Zeller is the EPA’s coal ash cleanup project manager in Kingston, and he was called Wednesday to check the newest leak, as well. The leak was discovered in a routine TVA inspection.