The Tennessee Valley Authority is defending its hiring of a contractor that a jury said last year "failed to exercise reasonable care" in how its workers cleaned up America's worst coal ash spill a decade ago and is being blamed for a variety of injuries and even deaths by the cleanup workers.
TVA President Bill Johnson said Jacobs Engineering Group, which TVA paid more than $64 million to help clean up the coal ash spill at the Kingston coal plant in 2008, was one of only three contractors that bid for the work and it was regarded at the time as the most qualified to help remove more than 5.4 million cubic yards of fly ash slurry that spilled out of a ruptured ash dike into the Emory River.
"I really feel badly that these people are injured and suffered and if that could have been prevented, that would have been a good thing," Johnson said. "But people were working on state-of-knowledge at the time."
Coal ash was classified as a solid waste, not a hazardous waste, by EPA, Johnson said.
"We have experience of more than 60 years of working around coal ash and we have never seen a case like this," he said.
In November 2018, a jury in Knoxville ruled that Jacobs had breached its contract with TVA, exposed its workers to unsafe conditions by not mandating or supplying enough protective gear during the ash cleanup, and could have been the cause of personal injuries to at least 49 ash spill cleanup workers and the deaths of three others involved in the cleanup.
An investigation by USA Today found more than 30 workers who cleaned up the December 2008 spill at the Tennessee Valley Authority Kingston Fossil Fuel Power Plant in Roane County are dead, and more than 250 are sick or dying. During a federal trial last year, workers and witnesses said Jacobs failed to warn workers of the risks of exposure to coal ash or to provide protective gear for those handling the coal residues, which can contain arsenic, mercury, silica, lead and other toxic chemicals.
Testimony in last year's trial showed that safety manager Tom Bock ordered dust masks kept on site for the workers destroyed and refused to provide them any protective gear.
The court has directed Jacobs and the workers suing the contractor to enter into mediation this year to see if a settlement can be reached on the amount that Jacobs will pay the plaintiffs.
TVA has not been sued over the incident by the workers, but the federal utility did agree in hiring Jacobs a decade ago to cover the contractor for worker damage claims. Both TVA and Jacobs have property liability insurance to help limit their exposure and no mediator or court has yet assessed any damages related to the worker claims.
If Jacobs agrees to pay the plaintiffs or is ordered to pay the injured workers workers for claims they say arose from their work on the Kingston ash cleanup, another court case could arise between Jacobs and TVA over the indemnification clauses in TVA's contracts.
"It is impossible to predict today what the possible outcome will be," Johnson said. "But my guess today is that this will not have an impact on people's rates in the future, or anything else."
TVA continues to work with Jacobs on up to $200 million of contracts under two blanket contracts at various projects across the Tennessee Valley. But Johnson said Jacobs is a major contractor for the Department of Energy, EPA and others and is regarded as one of the top engineering firms for the type of work that it does.
"I don't think we did anything wrong in hiring Jacobs," Johnson said. "Jacobs is one of the top 100 contractors for the federal government and so I would consider using them in the future if they were best fit for the job."
TVA has already spent more than $1.2 billion to clean up and compensate property owners and others around the Kingston Coal Plant due to the 2008 ash spill and the utility is spending more than $2 billion more to convert all of TVA's remaining coal ash ponds to dry storage.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340.