The Tennessee Valley Authority has cut the number of potentially hazardous coal ash and gypsum ponds from four to one over the past year, TVA officials said today.
In response to the 2008 coal ash spill in Kingston, TVA is strengthening the earthen dams around its ash ponds and working to replace its wet ash storage program altogether by 2019.
So far it has spent $22 million on projects at its coal plants, officials said.
In a briefing with reporters today, officials with TVA and Stantec Consulting Services said only the ash pond at TVA’s Cumberland plant near Nashville is still rated as potentially hazardous. The high hazard rating is due to a highway bridge downstream from the TVA facility.
By lowering the ash pond levels, buying up adjacent property and improving the drainage and slope of the earthen dams around the ash ponds, TVA has limited the risk of a spill at its coal combustion ponds to within federally accepted guidelines at the Widows Creek, Bull Run and Colbert Fossil plants.
For complete details, see tomorrow’s Times Free Press